A couple of weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary score of the health care legislation under consideration in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The bill was estimated to cost $1 trillion over 10 years, while reducing the number of uninsured by “only” one-third. As many informed bloggers noted at the time, the cost estimate was incomplete because the legislation that the CBO reviewed did not contain language about a public health insurance plan or an employer mandate.

Nevertheless, Republicans seized on the opportunity to engage in merciless political attacks, citing the incomplete CBO score as proof that health care reform is not worth doing:

John McCain: “[The CBO estimate] should be a wake up call for all of us to scrap the current bill and start over in a true bipartisan fashion.”

John Boehner: “[T]he public option would cost over $1 trillion, and would cause 23 million Americans to lose their private health care coverage.”

Lindsey Graham: “The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan.”

The HELP Committee has since added language for a public plan option to its legislation, as well as an employer mandate provision. The AP reports the new results:

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. [...]

The [employer mandate] provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals.

In other words, the addition of the public plan dramatically reduced the overall cost of the bill and ensured coverage of almost all Americans. So what excuses will McCain, Boehner, Graham, and other Republicans offer now? Their attacks were not only found to be baseless, but their concerns about the costs and coverage have also been addressed.

Earlier today, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove expressed his irrational irritation with the Obama White House on his Twitter page, writing the “Ingrates speak,” before linking to a post by Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin:

The post Rove linked to asks whether White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gives “credit to President Bush for the foresight and determination to see the surge through and deliver the results we saw this week.” The answer was “no.” Rubin then went on to lament the White House’s inability to “celebrate America’s accomplishments.”

Newt Gingrich, one of the de facto leaders of the Republican Party, gave an interview to ABC Medical editor Dr. Timothy Johnson last week to discuss health care reform. Gingrich predictably went into scare-mongering mode, making arguments against measures that aren’t even part of the debate. He said the U.S. should not adopt a “single national health system” such as in Canada or the UK. “If I have to choose between my doctor and a government bureaucrat, I have zero doubt which one I want,” he said. Of course, no such choice is being offered.

But Gingrich also touted the success of private health insurers. When Johnson noted that it is insurance companies that are coming between patients and needed care, Gingrich claimed, “If you don’t like your current insurance company, you can change insurance companies.” He later argued that private insurers have done “well”:

GINGRICH: They have it done well. And the fact is, overall, 71 percent of Americans are relatively satisfied with the health insurance.

JOHNSON: But we have 46 million uninsured.

GINGRICH: Right. And we have — you know, that means you also have 260 million insured.

Perhaps Gingrich hasn’t been paying attention to how private insurance companies have been doing it. They continually deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions and drop coverage for many who have insurance (and have paid monthly premiums) when they become ill. In fact, just this month, the CEOs of the nation’s top three health insurers told a House committee that they would continue the practice of canceling medical coverage for sick policy holders, a controversial measure called “rescission.”

Moreover, many of those who have health insurance really aren’t “insured” from the financial burdens of rising health care costs. A national study released this year found that while medical debt contributed to 62 percent of the bankruptcies in 2007, 78 percent of those bankruptcy filers had health insurance but “still were overwhelmed by their medical debt.”

Perhaps because he hasn’t had to shop around for health insurance for quite a while, Gingrich doesn’t know that it’s not that easy to just “change insurance companies” if you’re unhappy with your current provider. Aside from the fact that insurer consolidation has resulted in limited choice and higher profits for insurers, those seeking insurance on the individual market face higher costs, as the Commonwealth Fund has noted:

Insurance in the individual market is often impossible to obtain or unaffordable. Nearly nine of 10 people who explored obtaining coverage through the individual market never bought a plan, citing difficulties finding affordable coverage or being turned down.

If private insurance companies have “done well” and a public plan is no option, how does Gingrich plan to reform health care?