After signing into law what is touted as the most wide-ranging social legislation in years, President Obama now needs to sell his pet health care reform to a skeptical public. This will take a lot of doing, but considering his pluck and passion he might win them to his side, albeit grudgingly or otherwise.

Now that it's the law of the land, President Obama believes implicitly that he has enshrined "the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care."

The bill signing, he said, set in motion reforms that generations of Americans "have fought for and marched for and hungered for to see."

Though not a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, he waged a very contentious battle for the passage of this legislation throughout most of his first year in office which has been rocked by rising unemployment and an economy that has brought the country to the brink.

Had he lost in this make-or-break scuffle, it would have hampered his other initiatives for reforming, for example, a broken immigration, a runaway economy, and a faulty educational system.

But his victory came at a great cost. The Republican Party remains resolute in its opposition to health reform, describing it as an example of big government "running amok."

The GOP hardliners go on to say, a bit volubly and glibly, that this is the "end of America" as we know it. Strictly for partisanship, the party vows to "repeal and replace" the measure as it goes through a fine tuning in the Senate.

But the Republicans did not exactly say what they wanted in its place, countered Democrats. They simply have nothing to do with any of it, or some of its provisions, including funding for abortion or anticipated increase in premiums and unrestrained budget deficits.

Its regrettable politics is tainting the effort to bring equality in American society. Perpetuating the chasm between the haves and have-nots denigrates the founding principle of "all men are created equal."

America cannot stay as the only industrialized nation without health care coverage for all of its citizens, however imperfect the system may be.

Social Security and Medicare, enacted in 1935 and 1965 respectively, both started inauspiciously but have since become the bulwark of the country's retirement and health care systems.

In the same manner, Obamacare, officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, may not push back economic inequality with one stroke of the pen, but it's a step in the right direction.