Round & Round.

[Healthcare.]

Words.

"If former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and President Obama face off in the 2012 presidential campaign, America will witness the singular spectacle of two candidates getting very little love — and plenty of hate — for the same signature achievement: reforming health care.

Both overcame long odds to pass legislation, Romney in Massachusetts, Obama at the national level. Even the specifics of their reform laws are similar — both include subsidies for private insurance, the establishment of insurance exchanges and a mandate for individuals to maintain a minimum level of coverage. Each man expected to reap credit for his effort. But neither has gotten any political mileage out of it — in fact, both may have lost more ground than they picked up.

Why didn’t health-care reform pay off politically? In another era, we might be celebrating the remarkable fact that both a Democratic president and a leading Republican challenger arrived at fundamentally the same approach to fixing our health-care system. But that is not the America we live in now. Instead of rejoicing at how we’ve finally solved a national problem with a long and acrimonious history, we’re about to plunge into a new phase of that battle, with the Supreme Court agreeing to rule on the health law’s constitutionality in its new term — possibly at the height of a presidential campaign that could come down to the two men most tied to the issue.

...The resistance to reform doesn’t arise because Americans are such determined individualists that they reject all government help. In fact, much of the opposition has come from an entitled majority: seniors on Medicare, veterans and employees with good health benefits, who receive a substantial tax subsidy. The potency of these entitlements lies in the psychology they instill; the beneficiaries do not see themselves as receiving government assistance. They believe that they have earned their coverage, whereas others have not, and they can be indignant that other people expect the government to help them.

...When Congress passed the Medicare prescription-drug benefit in 2003, surveys indicated that senior citizens opposed the law; they viewed it more favorably only after it went into effect in 2006. Supporters of national health-care reform are hoping for just that kind of swing. Much as Romney’s program gained support in Massachusetts after being carried out, so the national law may win approval in 2014 if people can see how it works in practice.

But even if the Supreme Court upholds the individual mandate, the law may never reach that point if Obama fails to earn any credit for it and loses the election, only to see a Republican successor — perhaps, in a final irony, Romney — sign a repeal and complete a cycle of national frustration."

THE WASHINGTON POST: In 2012, both Obama and Romney would bear the burdens of health-care reform