U.S. Rep. Phil Roe says that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been unrealistic in its financial estimates for the pending health care bill.

Roe. R-1st of Johnson City, charged on Thursday that the CBO's projection of $118 billion in savings over 10 years is "a shell game."

In a conference call to news reporters in Northeast Tennessee, Roe said that the CBO made unrealistic assumptions to create artificial savings.

Congressional Democrats have released a final version of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul bill in advance of a House vote planned for Sunday.

The bill will cost $940 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and will cover 32 million Americans who now are uninsured.

However, Roe said the reality is that the true cost of the bill is more likely to be in line with the exponential growth of costs experienced with TennCare, and a similar Medicaid replacement experiment in Massachusetts.

Rep. Roe said the savings are calculated, in part, by taking $460 billion out of Medicare funding and spending it on other programs. This "budget gimmick" will hasten the time that Medicare becomes insolvent, he said.

Roe said the CBO estimate would also use $70 billion in revenue that is to accumulate over 10 years as a result of the long-term care CLASS act, to cover the act's liability.

The CBO figures also use a $53 billion Social Security surplus from payroll taxes that also eventually has to be paid out, he said.

"It's a shell game, as far as money goes," charged the freshman congressman of the bill's projected costs and savings.

Roe noted that Tennessee is covering 1.2 million people under TennCare at a cost of $7 billion.

Using that same ratio of 1.2 million people to $7 billion in cost, Roe said the addition of 31 million people not covered by Medicaid but said to be covered under the health care bill backed by President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress would calculate to cost $2 trillion, rather than the $1 trillion it is said to cost.

He added that TennCare is "a very modest plan" in comparison to the federal proposal.

Roe said the CBO "scoring," released on Thursday, started a 72-hour clock, "so it looks like a vote on Sunday. "I have tickets for the race" in Bristol, Roe said, but, instead, will most likely be in Washington to vote against the bill.

Roe said unsustainable costs for states that have not been exempted in the many deals made in order to round up votes is only one problem with the bill.

Another problem, he said, is the secrecy and lack of debate that surrounded what has been called "the most important piece of social legislation in 45 years, since Medicare was debated."

In addition, the bill does not do anything to address "the real problem in health care: costs," said Roe, a physician who retired after 31 years practicting obstetrics and gynecology.

The bill does not make individuals any more responsible for keeping a rein on their own health care costs, he said, which a medical savings account would do.

In addition, the bill does not include "meaningful tort reform," which Roe said makes most doctors practice "defensive medicine," ordering tests and procedures that may not be medically necessary, but would be helpful in defending against a malpractice lawsuit.

"We know defensive medicine is practiced; every doctor in the United States who is honest will tell you," Roe said.

He added, "Expanding entitlements are making health care costs go up. Just look at Medicare." He pointed out that Medicare cost $3 billion in its first year, but had grown to $90 billion in annual costs 25 years later, and "today costs $500 billion."

There is nothing in the current bill, Roe said, "to bend the cost down."

He noted that, in a telephone town hall he held on Tuesday of this week, 82 percent of more than 1,500 people who took a touch-tone poll opposed the current bill, 9 percent supported it, and 9 percent were undecided.

"That's overwhelming opposition," he said, in this congressional district.

However, Roe said he personally believes that health-care reform is needed.

He said that if Congress can start over and take a careful, transparent, step-by-step approach, "people will get behind it.

"There is no doubt in my mind that people want health-care reform" Roe said, but most do not want this approach, which he said has "so many unintended consequences" and a growing number of "deals" traded for votes that continue to come to light.

Roe said many in the health-care profession see layoffs coming if the current bill passes, with its heavy regulatory approach.

He said he learned in his telephone town hall that one medical group in his district "is no longer going to take time to fill out Medicare forms. They can't afford to do it anymore." More of that may follow, he said.

The biggest health-care employers in the region, Wellmont and Mountain States Health Alliance, "are holding their breaths" to see what Congress does with the bill, Roe said.