Senator Kent Conrad today made an unusual request of the Congressional Budget Office: a 20-year cost estimate on the latest draft of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’ bill reforming the nation’s health care system. “We’ve got to have somebody look at this objectively and try to tell us: do we bend the cost curve the right way,” Conrad told reporters just off the Senate floor today. “I mean really when you think about it that is absolutely key to this whole effort. If we’re not bending the cost curve the right way it’d be a profound mistake.”

Indeed, none of the other four bills that have been marked up have shown long term savings by the CBO. And the agency, headed by Doug Elmendorf, has taken a beating by Dems and outside groups for refusing to score savings that an emphasis on prevention might bring about and, as the Institute of Medicine put it, “stingy” scoring.

While the Office and Management and Budget, a division of the White House, will put out its own scoring – those estimates are usual perceived as skewed to whatever end the president wishes. The CBO, meanwhile, is viewed as more objective and thus their endorsement much sought after. Conrad’s request hints that the CBO’s 10-year score of Baucus’ bill doesn’t yet show cost savings. Estimating 20 years out is hard to do and often unreliable but if the CBO comes back with a score that shows significant savings Baucus can declare victory and Elmendorf will be saved from another round of recriminations.