The CBO did a preliminary estimate of the Republican amendment to the House health care bill. There are now hard numbers to compare between the Democratic and Republican notions for health care.

Coverage:
Democrats – 36 million more covered by 2019, 96% of US covered
Republicans – 3 million more covered by 2019, 83% of US covered

That’s pathetic. Because the population is expected to grow over time, under the Republican health care plan there would be 2 million MORE Americans uninsured in 2019 than there are today, according to the CBO (50 million today, 52 million in 2019). But let’s look at cost:

Democrats – $104 billion in deficit reduction by 2019
Republicans – $68 billion in deficit reduction by 2019

The “fiscal conservatives” reduce the deficit LESS than the Democrats in the budget window, under their plan. And in the large-group market, where 80% of Americans get their private insurance, there would be a 0-3% reduction in the cost of their premiums; in other words, almost nothing (although that’s a preliminary figure that CBO doesn’t stand behind very aggressively).

Ezra Klein notes:

The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan. And amazingly, the Democratic bill has already been through three committees and a merger process. It’s already been shown to interest groups and advocacy organizations and industry stakeholders. It’s already made its compromises with reality. It’s already been through the legislative sausage grinder. And yet it saves more money and covers more people than the blank-slate alternative proposed by John Boehner and the House Republicans. The Democrats, constrained by reality, produced a far better plan than Boehner, who was constrained solely by his political imagination and legislative skill.

Watch the Republicans now argue that the CBO estimates don’t matter and that they aren’t comprehensive in their analysis. After eight months of hyping every draft the CBO sent out on the Democratic plan.

UPDATE: Since the amendment could never pass in a million years, I don’t think it’s worth it to cut an ad about it, but Americans United For Change did. A snarky blog post seems about the right level of attention, IMO.

UPDATE II: Jon Cohn notes that the GOP plan actually shifts the burden of payment from the healthy to the sick:

Many individuals and families would experience changes in premiums that differed from the changes in average premiums in their insurance market. As explained below, some provisions of the legislation would tend to decrease the premiums paid by all insurance enrollees, while other provisions would tend to increase the premiums paid by less healthy enrollees or would tend to increase the premiums paid by enrollees in some states relative to enrollees in other states. As a result, some individuals and families within each market would see reductions in premiums that would be larger or smaller than the estimated average reductions, and some people would see increases. [Emphasis mine]