Senator Tom Daschle's narrative of what went on behind the scenes in the making of the new health care legislation delivers a powerful lesson in the workings of American politics.

The evolution of health care reform was drawn-out, frustrating, and complicated, but Senator Tom Daschle is the ideal person to recount the process.  His account will guide you through the entire story, from the earliest presidential campaign debates -- and his firsthand experiences in the Obama team -- through the battles on Capitol Hill to solve our most serious health care problems.  Not simply a book about policy, Daschle’s narrative describes in vivid detail how fragile the support in Congress was at every step of the way, as well as the frantic efforts to design a rescue strategy before time ran out.  

Combining his insights as a health care expert and his political expertise, this is the inside story about how the new legislation came together: from the persistence of President Obama to the subsequent efforts--and counter efforts--within the Senate and the House.  In Daschle's hands, this becomes a dramatic personal story and a remarkable lesson in politics at the highest level.

< TOM DASCHLE is a former U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader from South Dakota. He is currently a Senior Policy Advisor to the law firm of DLA Piper and a member of DLA Piper's Global Board.  Daschle is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a co-founder of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington DC, and the author of Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.  He is on the board of directors for the National Democratic Institute, a member of the Health Policy and Management Executive Council at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Daschle is married to Linda Hall Daschle and has three children and four grandchildren. DAVID NATHER spent nearly a decade reporting on the politics of Congress and the White House as a senior writer for Congressional Quarterly. He has also covered health care policy in Congress for the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., and lives with his family in Silver Spring, MD.

< Part OneTHE STAKES This page intentionally left blank1 | THE GREAT DIVIDEOf all the stories from the summer of 2009, when town hall meetings across the country erupted in fiery protests against health care reform, there was one story that quickly made the rounds among Democrats on Capitol Hill. It was the perfect illustration of just how deeply some people’s distrust of government had affected their views of the health care debate.It took place on Monday, August 3, right at the beginning of the month-long August recess that Congress traditionally takes. Gene Green, a moderate House Democrat, was facing a rowdy crowd of constituents in his hometown of Houston, Texas. Already, they were unhappy with his recent vote for the House climate-change bill. Now, they let him know they were equally unhappy with what they’d heard about the health care reform bill.One man in the audience shouted out to the rest of the crowd, “How many people, by a show of hands, oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care?”Almost everyone in the room raised their hands. There was lots of cheering, whooping, and hollering. Someone yelled out, “Yes, sir!”So Green turned the question on its head. “How many of you have Medicare?” he asked. Medicare, of course, is the government-run health care program that pays for medical care for 45 million people, including 37 million seniors and 7 million people with disabilities. It is the program that provides the crucial safety net for our nation’s elderly, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, sick or healthy. About half of the people in their crowd raised their hands.1The discussion quickly moved on, so it’s not clear how many of those people understood the irony. Green didn’t ask the natural follow-up: “Are you aware that Medicare is a government-run program?” Instead, he let a man in the audience raise his concerns about how Medicare is working in practice—with doctors refusing to accept Medicare patients because the federal government is cutting their payments. That’s a valid concern, and it deserved to be dealt with on its own. But it’s one thing to address problems in the Medicare system. It’s another to oppose, on its face, any kind of health care safety net that involves the government in any way.Should we get rid of Medicare and let senior citizens fend for themselves? Should we eliminate the Medicaid program for the poor and people with disabilities? Wha Read Less