More than 100 members participated, Democratic aides said, to discuss the differences between the House’s health bill and the one passed by the Senate. With Senate Democrats barely able to muster the 60 votes necessary to pass their own bill and President Obama leaning toward the Senate’s position on some key issues, House Democrats are increasingly concerned that they could be marginalized at the bargaining table.

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If Republicans claim the seat held for nearly a half-century by Democrat Edward M. Kennedy, who died in August, Senate Democrats would lose their ability to overcome a GOP filibuster. Democrats said Friday that losing the seat could deal a crippling blow to the health-care measure, which last month required the vote of every member of the Senate Democratic caucus to overcome united Republican opposition.

“It will kill the health bill,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

Frank said he expects Attorney General Martha Coakley, a Democrat, to prevail, but Democrats nonetheless began trying to plot a health-care strategy if they lose their supermajority in the Senate. Senate aides said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has shut down talk of the most obvious option: avoiding the need for another Senate vote by having the House approve the Senate-passed version of the health bill, rather than merging the two and having each chamber vote again. Pelosi has repeatedly said she could not rally the votes to approve a package that many House Democrats think would force people to buy health insurance without ensuring that they could afford it.

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The president made the offer in an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric hours before the network televised the Super Bowl. Obama challenged Republicans, who have been largely unified in opposing his proposals, to bring their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system to the public discussion.

“I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues,” Obama said. “What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table. . . . I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.”

The invitation to meet together on Feb. 25 — and to do so live in front of the American public — represents an effort by Obama to hit the reset button on the top domestic priority of his first year in office. It also reflects a recognition that he must have at least some Republican support if he hopes to see health-care reform pass.

Democratic efforts to push a final health bill through the Congress without Republican support fell apart last month when the president’s party lost its filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. Scott Brown, the newly elected Republican senator from Massachusetts, campaigned against what he called the Democratic Party’s costly government takeover of the health-care system.

But it remains unclear whether a single discussion can begin to bridge the political and substantive policy divide with Republicans, who view their united front against the Democratic bills as a key to their political recovery. Obama also gave little indication during the interview that he is ready to abandon the basic direction his party took on health care.

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Thirty? Life has hardly begun at 30! Gulp.

The hard truth is that decades of research have proved that a woman’s fertility declines over time. But now it appears that the old biological clock may start ticking much earlier — and faster — than once thought.

A study from the University of St. Andrews and Edinburgh University, published last month by PLoS ONE, tracked the human ovarian reserve — or a woman’s potential number of eggs — from conception through menopause. Using a mathematical model and data from 325 women, the researchers found that the average woman is born with around 300,000 eggs and steadily loses them as she ages, with just 12 percent of those eggs remaining at the age of 30, and only 3 percent left by 40.

“That’s a greater percentage of loss at an earlier age than had previously been reported,” says reproductive endocrinologist Robert Stillman, of Shady Grove Fertility in Rockville. “One might be able to argue whether there are 12 percent remaining at age 30 or 22 percent or even 40 percent, but it is still clear that there’s a very rapid loss in the number of eggs available as women age and that the smaller pool of [older] eggs is also more likely to” contain a higher proportion of abnormal eggs, he adds, pointing out that from the mid-30s on, the decline in fertility is much steeper with each passing year.

“This adds to the abundant evidence that for women, unfortunately, it’s use ‘em or lose ‘em.”

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