President Obama’s signing of the health care bill on March 23, 2010 marked significant changes in the future of the
On the health care front, several minor changes are made to the 2010 Health Care Reform Bill that was passed two weeks prior. Amendments to the original bill include increasing tax credits for those buying health insurance, lowering the penalty for not purchasing insurance by 2014, and increasing subsidies for lower-income groups, among other changes.
The education portion of the bill, not originally part of the 2010 Health Care Reform Bill, focuses on higher education institutions and the student loan system in particular. According to the White House Website, there are three major provisions of the education legislation.
First, the government will invest “$40 billion in Pell Grants to ensure that all eligible students receive an award and that these awards are increased in future years to help keep pace with the rising cost of college.” For those unfamiliar with Pell grants, they are grants to generally low-income undergraduate students, with disbursed amounts dependent on their family’s income.
The second main stipulation of the education portion of the health care bill is the revamping of loan repayment. Repayment of loans will be held at ten percent of a student’s income, and the balance will be forgiven in twenty years if payments are kept up.
The third main provision of the legislation deals with granting money to community colleges. President Obama, known for his support for community colleges in his presidential campaign, signed the bill that would spend $4 billion dollars over two years on the bettering of community college programs across the nation.
The bill will also lessen the role of private banks in low-interest student loans. Instead of granting subsidies to private banks to lend to students, the federal government will end that practice and take complete responsibility of facilitating these loans.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “The new law ends the role of private banks as middlemen, cuts program costs, and channels the extra money to the neediest students, ending years of controversy over a system in which both the government and the private sector were major players.”
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