House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is doing everything in her power to get health care reform passed

Gloria Borger
CNN Senior Political Analyst

The story so far: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi does everything in her power to get health care reform passed by keeping her Democratic caucus together.

She keeps liberals by insisting on a public option. She works on fiscal moderates by re-jiggering it. She works on lowering the cost of the package. She pays for it by taxing millionaire couples, appealing to the class-warfare crowd.

And to keep the Catholic bishops (and their moderate allies) on board, she keeps severe restrictions on paying for abortion in the measure. The liberals, of course, threaten to bolt - but it remains in the final package.

This is not legislating; it's whack-a-mole.

The challenge is simply to try and keep your unruly team in line, and maybe pick up a stray vote or two from the opposition. If you succeed, it's not about bipartisanship. It's just salesmanship.

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Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Jay Newton-Small
Time

On Saturday morning, about 12 hours before the House of Representatives passed sweeping legislation to expand health care coverage to almost all Americans, President Barack Obama did what he does best: he gave an inspirational speech meant to rally recalcitrant House Democrats. Many in the room credited Obama with swaying the last of the fence sitters. "A few members that were leaning no told me afterward that they'd been moved to vote yes," Representative Rob Andrews, a New Jersey Democrat, told reporters after the meeting.

Obama spoke of doing something greater than yourself. He asked House Dems to join him in "bending the arc of history," a phrase he first invoked in his election-victory speech a year ago before 125,000 people in Chicago's Grant Park. And though there was cheering and chants of "Fired up, ready to go!" this was no easy sell for Obama. The vote came the same week as Democrats lost the Virginia and New Jersey governors' mansions, and a day after the Labor Department reported a 26-year record unemployment rate of 10.2%. Preaching altruism in such a climate to politicians bent on self-preservation is tough. In the end Democrats lost 39 of their own — passing the bill 220-215 with a cushion of just two votes, one of those a Republican in a heavily Democratic Louisiana district.

Democrats on Capitol Hill spent some of the aftermath congratulating themselves on their historic achievement, but they knew as well as anyone that it was far too early to really celebrate. Obama's speech, after all, was strikingly partisan, lambasting the GOP for doing nothing more than "saying no, stopping progress, gumming up the works." That change in tone from his fruitless attempts at outreach 10 months before in the run-up to the stimulus vote made it clear that Democrats are now resigned to going it alone both in the House and the Senate. Majority leader Harry Reid has moved away from the lone Republican still negotiating on health care, Maine's Olympia Snowe, and toward a plan to pass the bill relying solely on Democratic votes, of which he'll need every one in order to overcome the threat of a filibuster by Republicans.

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Candy Crowley and David Gergen
CNN Senior Political Correspondents

CNN

Think you know all about health care? Test your knowledge and learn more about the health care debate.

CNN

Narrow passage of a sweeping health care bill by the House of Representatives portends a continuing difficult fight for President Obama and fellow Democrats to get a bill through the Senate and into law.

The House voted 220-215 late Saturday, with 39 Democrats opposed and one Republican in favor, to approve what would be the biggest expansion of health care coverage since Medicare was created more than 40 years ago.

The Affordable Health Care for America Act, or H.R. 3962, restricts insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with a pre-existing condition or charging higher premiums based on gender or medical history. It also provides federal subsidies to those who cannot afford it. And it guarantees coverage for 96 percent of Americans, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Click here to keep reading and scroll down to learn all about the key parts of the health care bill.

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services

David Frum
CNN Contributor

You've heard the saying: "In war, amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics."

The political equivalent: "Amateurs talk ideology - professionals talk interest groups."

Small but sophisticated interest groups use big political battles to gain special advantages. Health care reform is, of course, the biggest battle of them all, with trillions of dollars at stake.

On Saturday night with the House vote in favor of the health reform bill, the trial lawyers sliced themselves a nice little piece of that bonanza.

It's Section 2531 of the bill - to be precise Section 2531(4)b - and it provides as follows:

The new health bill will empower the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make grants to states that reform their medical malpractice systems. There are just two conditions: Those reforms must not "limit attorneys' fees or impose caps on damages."

Which is like saying that we're going to encourage you to develop a personal weight loss plan that includes neither exercise nor changes in diet.

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AC360°

The Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of an alternative health care reform bill submitted by House Republicans today. The Democrats released their proposal last week.

The CBO projects the effect the proposals will have on the budget over the next 10 years. According to the new review today, the Republicans proposal would reduce deficits "by $68 billion over the 2010-2019 period" while the Democrats proposal would result in a reduction of "$104 billion over the 2010-2019 period."

The CBO also projects that the Republican bill will leave approximately 52 million non-elderly residents uninsured by 2019. The plan proposed by the Democrats would leave about 18 million non-elderly residents uninsured.

Read the Congressional Budget Office's review of the Democrat's Proposal and the Republican's.

Editor's Note: While health care reform proposals are still being reconciled on the Senate floor, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled the House plan Thursday at a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Read the full contents of the proposed bill.

AC360°

The battle over health care reform reached another milestone Thursday as top House Democrats unveiled sweeping legislation that includes a highly controversial public health insurance option.

The nearly 2,000 page bill - a combination of three different versions passed by House committees - would cost $894 billion over 10 years and extend insurance coverage to 36 million uncovered Americans, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

It guarantees that 96 percent of Americans have coverage, Pelosi said. The figure is based on an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Among other things, the bill would subsidize insurance for poorer Americans and create health insurance exchanges to make it easier for small groups and individuals to purchase coverage. It would also cap annual out-of-pocket expenses and prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is starting a campaign against abortion funding in national health care legislation.

Peter Hamby
CNN Political Producer

Calling Democratic health care bills "seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and conscience," the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is urging priests around the country to speak out against the legislation from the pulpit this Sunday.

The conference – the leadership body of the Catholic Church in the United States – is distributing a flier to churches to insert in their weekly newsletters urging parishioners to contact their senators and representatives to ask them "to fix these bills with the pro-life amendments."

"The bills will have to change or the bishops have pledged to oppose them," the flier reads. "Our nation is at a crossroads."

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