Here's what happened. Federal loans have existed for a long time. The Federal government would guarantee loans made by private organizations. However, these were always "Federal loans", the Federal government controlled the interest rate and the maximum amounts available.
The government under the Obama administration changed things so that "Federal" loans instead of being made by private organizations and backed by the government, were directly distributed from the treasury.
However even before this, there were separate Federal and private loans, and the only way to get to $200k (for undergrad) was to get unsubsidized private loans that weren't backed by the government.
