Testifying before the U.S. House Rules Committee this afternoon, GOP Rep. John Shimkus became the latest Illinois Republican to push the misleading claim that the Medicaid expansion in the Democrats' health care reform bill will ultimately cost Illinois $2 billion between 2014 and 2019.  "This bill expands more people into Medicaid, which will add $2 billion in additional costs for Illinois," he said today.  Watch it:

But as we've noted, while the $2 billion figure is accurate when referring to the Senate bill approved last year, it ignores that the Democrats intend to soon pass an amendment (via reconciliation) that greatly lowers the financial burden on individual states.  By our count, with that amendment included, the total cost to Illinois of expanding Medicaid to 500,000 additional residents between 2014 and 2019 would be more in the ballpark of $700 million.