How Democrats Pulled Health Care from the Brink

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney

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March 04, 2010

How Democrats Pulled Health Care from the Brink

"It was a perfect storm that nearly killed health care reform in Congress last year -- an elongated process, weak leadership from the White House, strong Republican opposition and the election of Scott Brown. But now," Marc Ambinder notes, "with no perceptible change to the political landscape, the chances of major legislation passing are greater today than they've been in two months."

How? The key events in chronological order:

Some health insurers recently chose to" significantly raise their premiums on people with coverage -- that is -- on people who in theory are happy with the system and don't have any stake in reform."

The White House decided "to unleash the President's brain" at the Republican House retreat.

Republicans voted against the debt commission "which many GOPers had supported when it was a Republican idea...and suddenly opposed when it was a Democratic idea."

Sen. Jim Bunning's (R-KY) one-man filibuster "put a face on Republican obstructionism in the Senate."

President Obama yesterday finally gave Democrats "a plan of action and an endorsement of the often-used but suddenly controversial reconciliation procedure to pass the Senate's bill with a majority vote."

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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March 04, 2010