According to a pair of Capitol Hill sources, preliminary estimates from the Congressional Budget Office suggest that a strong public option--the kind that the House of Representatives is putting in its reform bill--should net somewhere in the neighborhood of $150 billion in savings over ten years.
So the price tag of healthcare reform will be $150 billion less expensive with the public option attached. I wonder how the Republicans and Blue Dogs (and the COCS) will spin this into a bad thing -- we can't handle this kind of savings.