Obama's Legacy Tied To Health Care Reform That Bears His Name

In his first term, President Barack Obama made history. Now he has to make good. In 2010, Obama bested Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton by pushing through Congress a big health care reform law -- a sweeping measure that aims to extend coverage to at least 30 million of the country's 49 million uninsured. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare -- the president now says he likes the term -- since then has withstood relentless attacks from congressional Republicans, conservative governors, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and even the Supreme Court. But none of those triumphs will mean a thing to the American people, especially the uninsured, if Obama can't meet the complex administrative and technical challenges involved in implementing the law or the job of selling it to those it aims to help.

There is another threat as well. In budget talks and debt-ceiling brinksmanship, Republicans are pressing to slash Medicaid funding -- the same funding Obama is counting on to pay for expanding the rolls of the insured poor. Nothing could be more important to Obama's legacy. The massive health care overhaul stands as a test of one of the central premises of his political philosophy: that government, carefully and judiciously applied, can be a positive force in the lives of the citizens it serves. Obamacare's success could shift Americans' attitudes about the role of government in society. Its failure could cement the notion that government isn't capable of doing big things and doing them well. The public remains skeptical of the health care reform law. According to a HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted last Tuesday and Wednesday, just 20 percent of people believe they will be better off as a result. Forty-one percent expect to be worse off and 25 percent responded the law won't make much difference in their lives.