The conservative blog, The US Report (not to be confused with U.S. Report), published a recent piece covering some of the confusion regarding CBO in the Democrats' health care bill. See the following excerpt:
At present Democrats and President Barack Obama are pushing healthcare legislation under the pretense it will save Americans money and make insurance affordable to some of the uninsured. Republicans have criticized the Senate version of healthcare, HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, for its cost. Democrats have responded it will save money over time and that position has been echoed by sympathetic pundits and analysts across cyberspace and TV Land.
Fact is, no one really knows exactly what it will cost and a March 15 statement at the Congressional Budget Office explains why. Furthermore, most members of Congress do not know what is in the complicated bill because they haven’t seen it.
Acknowledging what amounts to startup costs for the Internal Revenue Service and the US Dept. of Health and Human Services, the CBO attempted to calculate estimates for “discretionary spending.”