We understand the need to constrain health care costs; all of us on this blog and at the New America health policy program have been talking about long-term sustainability, about the intrinsic links between quality, cost and coverage since day one. We're also well aware that the Congressional Budget Office is skeptical of cost savings (at least as currently worded in draft legislation and vague policy statements from industry stakeholders) through delivery system reform and cognizant of the practical and political challenges of wringing the waste out of the system.  As CBO director Douglas Elmendorf told USA TODAY:

"There's tremendous potential to reap savings in the health sector without harming health but turning that potential into reality is challenging," Elmendorf said. "It's going to be a long, hard slog."

We expect much congressional slogging in the weeks to come.

But here we want to again caution against drawing final conclusions (or political lines in the sand) from preliminary data.

Our colleague Sarah Axeen on Tuesday posted on how very preliminary these early CBO estimate on health legislation are—and how easily they can be spun or misunderstood. Bob Greenstein and Paul Van de Water at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities had some similar thoughts. They write:

The news media are widely reporting that...[the draft Senate HELP bill] would cut the number of uninsured by only 16 million people while costing $1 trillion over ten years. That conclusion, however, is incorrect...It does not show, nor does it purport to show, the effects that the full HELP plan would have on either health coverage or the federal budget.

As both Sarah and the CBPP experts noted the draft bill omits:

• Medicaid Expansion
• Employer Responsibility
• Individual Responsibility
• Public Plan Option

Observers, they conclude, would be "well-advised to await such analysis before drawing conclusions about the legislation."  The HELP committee starts marking up (or should we say slogging) later today. It could take until the end of next week. Finance is still working on, well, Finances. No one is seriously talking about  spending  a trillion or more without offsets and savings.  So let's take note of the preliminaries. And move on.