So much for the claim that putting off much of the impact of the health care reform act until 2013 or later would keep it from being an election issue in 2012.
Sure, some aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - even some new taxes - have taken effect. Young adults have been able to stay on their parents' health care plan until age 26 since Sept. 23, 2010.
Of course, most of the more onerous provisions - and heavy lifting - will come after the Nov. 6 presidential election.
Open enrollment for millions of uninsured won't begin until October 2013. Federal subsidies to help lower-income and many middle-class families pay premiums won't hit the budget until 2014. That's also the year insurance companies no longer will be able to deny coverage to people with a history of medical conditions - or charge them more because of those problems.
But make no mistake: Health care, and the future of Obamacare, will be a plank in each major party's platform this election cycle.
"This matter will now be fought out in the political arena, again," Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican, said Thursday, "It makes this issue the pre-eminent issue of the presidential campaign."
Still, it's a part of the platform that could trip GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who signed health care reform legislation into law as Massachusetts governor in 2006.
"Over the next four months, the question is can Romney essentially make lemonade out of lemons," Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, told a reporter.
Thus, Romney will try to squeeze votes out of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act this year.
