Nelson for health bill; change reassures gun owners, helps osteopathic, allopathic med schools

U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska said this morning that he is prepared to join his fellow Democrats in voting for the health-care reform bill, "clearing the way for final passage by Christmas," Shailagh Murray of The Washington Post reports.

"Democratic leaders spent days trying to hammer out a deal with Nelson, and worked late Friday night with Nelson on abortion coverage language that had proved the major stumbling block. But Nelson also secured other favors for his home state," Murray writes. "Asked if he was prepared to support the bill, Nelson said, 'Yeah'."

This may be part of the deal: Majority Leader Harry Reid's floor amendment "aims to relieve gun owners' concerns that reform would view gun ownership as an unhealthy lifestyle and charge them higher premiums or deny them coverage altogether," Chris Frates reports for Politico. "The amendment says that nothing in the bill requires people to disclose whether they own a gun and gun ownership cannot be factored into premiums or coverage decisions."

The biggest section of the amendment creates a grant program for osteopathic and allopathic medical schools to help recruit "students most likely to practice medicine in underserved rural communities, providing rural-focused training and experience, and increasing the number of recent allopathic and osteopathic medical school graduates who practice in underserved rural communities." All rural doctors in Nebraska attend allopathic or osteopathic medical schools, according to this page on the University of Nebraska's medical school Web site.