[UPDATED] The AP’s $500 Billion Dollar Health Care “Mistake”

What is the expected ten-year cost of the current House health care plan? According to the Congressional Budget Office, roughly $1 trillion.  And while it’s fair to note that the CBO numbers are projections (and that this is a thorny piece of legislation),  standard protocol is for the media to cite the CBO figures

So it was puzzling to see that the AP inflated the number by $500 billion in a story that ran yesterday, without citing a source.  And then they did it again today (still without a source for the higher figure).

Now, as TPM reports, Newt Gingrich has picked up on the number.  As Yglesias notes, this is how mistaken ideas become part of the accepted conventional wisdom.

UPDATED @ 5:10 p.m. 7/16/09:  Greg Sargent posted the answers he received from an AP spokesman about this.  They give their own math but continue to cite the $1.5 trillion figure as fact, without referring to the growing dispute or the CBO estimate.