President Signs Reconciliation

President Barack Obama has signed H.R. 4872, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

The reconciliation bill makes tax and revenue changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), which was signed by President Barack Obama on March 23.  Those changes are summarized here.

Mr. Obama, who today signed the reconciliation bill at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Va., was introduced by Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden and a faculty member at the community college.

As Ms. Biden and Mr. Obama pointed out, Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (in Title II, Subtitle A), also makes significant changes to the ways in which student loans are provided and how schools are funded.

Mr. Obama said that $68 billion will be saved over ten years in what he called a victory in the battle between between “banks and interests of students” and the end of “unnecessary middlemen wasting billions of dollars.”

Mr. Obama added that neither the health reforms nor the education reforms will solve all the problems, but he did note that the health reforms “represent the toughest insurance reforms in history ” and that “we expect colleges and universities to hold down cost increases.”