"It's the first time the insurance industry has been steamrolled in New Jersey," said Assemblywoman Loretta Weinberg, Democrat of Teaneck, an early supporter of government intervention to end what some call "drive-through deliveries."

The district also reacted quickly when in the new health care climate mothers and their babies were heading home from the hospitals following "drive-through deliveries."

Mr. Clinton said, "There is an emerging national consensus that we must put a stop to these so-called drive-through deliveries."

Last year, they note, the fight was over "drive-through" deliveries.

Just a month ago, the tide seemed to be running the other way: Congress and the White House had rushed through Federal legislation prohibiting H.M.O.'s from encouraging "drive-through deliveries" - the practice of sending new mothers home after one day in the hospital.

I led the Administration's efforts to end the practice of "drive-through deliveries," in which hospitals discharged new mothers twenty-four hours after giving birth.

The bad news is that the cost-cutting pressures behind the system's expansion have also led to the types of limits on hospital stays that produced Federal legislation on drive-through deliveries (enacted) and mastectomies (pending).

Consumer Watchdog lobbied Congress to ban what the group called "drive-through deliveries," hospitals forcing mothers to be discharged after 8 hours.

Mr. Clinton had used a Saturday radio address in May 1996 to endorse such legislation, condemning what he called "drive-through deliveries."

Consumer advocates and some members of Congress had begun a campaign to outlaw "outpatient mastectomies," just as Congress prohibited "drive-through deliveries."