Two thorny details bedevil health bill

Two pressure points are emerging in Congress's rush to pass healthcare legislation: how to pay for the package and whether to create a new public health-insurance plan. Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said his office has given lawmakers a "tremendous quantity of numbers" as they weigh how much it will cost to extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans and how much revenue will be raised by proposed tax increases. The CBO's numbers are critical because they are the basis for determining a bill's price tag, and whether the plan won't increase the budget deficit.