From Sen Brownback released last July:



Some of these are 20-30 years down the road, but a few are within the CBO predictions duration:
ESRD program. In 1972, Congress enacted... The program proved twice as expensive as the publicly predicted levels—$229 million in 1974 instead of the predicted $100 million.

Medicaid DSH program. In 1987, Congress estimated that Medicaid‟s disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments would cost less than $1 billion in 1992. The actual cost that year was a staggering $17 billion.

Medicare home care benefit. When Congress debated changes to Medicare‟s home care benefit in 1988, the projected 1993 cost of the benefit was $4 billion. The actual 1993 cost was more than twice that amount, $10 billion.

Massachusetts Commonwealth Care. In 2006, the Bay State passed a historic universal-coverage plan, which combined a mandate on all residents to have health coverage with generous subsidies for lower-income uninsured families. At that time, the program was predicted to cost roughly $472 million in fiscal year 2008. It cost $628 million that year.

Medicare catastrophic coverage benefit. In 1988, Congress added a catastrophic coverage benefit to Medicare, to take effect in 1990. In July 1989, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doubled its cost estimate for the program, for the four-year period 1990-1993, from $5.7 billion to $11.8 billion.

Surprisingly, when Congress found out the Medicare catastrophic coverage benefit would cost at least twice as much as originally thought, they actually repealed it before it went into effect...can you imagine the current Congress doing something that responsible?

I've thought since the beginning that it's extremely naive and/or deceiving to claim this won't add to the deficit. By these measures, it could easily cost twice as much as predicted or more. $1.8 trillion sounds a lot more likely by 2019...

Not to mention the CBO has already estimated it will add to the deficit if the "doctor fix" is passed relatively soon as Dems want. They only took it out of this bill because it would cost too much and make the numbers look bad.