Lots of Democrats can point to lots of different moments when they think the health care bill was brought back from the brink of collapse.
But for a number of senior House Democrats, the crucial turning point was a meeting the night of March 9 in the offices of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It was supposed to be a strategy session with Senate Democratic leaders about the budget reconciliation procedure that Democrats were planning to use to make final changes to the health care bill and push them through the Senate on a simple majority vote.
Instead, the session focused entirely on the question of whether to include another of President Obama’s top legislative priorities — a sweeping overhaul of federal student loan programs — in the reconciliation package.
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Although overshadowed by the larger health care fight,
the inclusion of the education bill may have been a decisive factor, especially at a time when House Democrats were exceedingly distrustful of their Senate colleagues and were essentially being forced against their better judgment to approve the Senate’s health care bill as the base law to which they would later make changes.
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It was a huge victory for the House.
“It’s remarkable in the impact it’s going to have on American people’s lives,” one senior Democratic leadership aide said. “It goes straight to the core of what the Democratic party represents — accessible education, helping people go to college and cutting the deficit.”Republicans unleashed scathing criticism of the plan and derided it as both a government takeover of health care and a government takeover of student loan programs. But the government already supplies all the money for student loans, essentially paying private banks to make loans with taxpayer funds. The banks sell the loans back to the government at a profit.
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http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/a-turning-point-in-the-health-care-fight/
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