JOIN THE CONVERSATION: Do you think that you or your employer will benefit from the federal health care reform law? Add your comment below. To write a letter, go to sacbee.com/sendletter.

If this year's election was a referendum on President Barack Obama's first term, then it was also a test of the voters' support for his biggest

legislative achievement: federal health care reform. And while polls

continue to show widespread public skepticism about the Affordable Care Act, Obama's re-election means the law is probably here to stay.

That prospect should cheer Californians, who support the federal health care reform in greater numbers than voters in most other states. Not coincidentally, California has also done more to implement the law than other states, where officials were holding back to see if the reforms would survive challenges in the courts and the political process.

The law is expected to expand coverage to more than 4 million Californians who are going without insurance today. Half of those people will get coverage through Medi-Cal, the federal-state insurance program for the poor. The other half will buy it, with subsidies, through the new online insurance exchange to be known as California Covered.

The law also has implications for people who already have insurance.

To date, hundreds of thousands of Californians have taken advantage of a provision requiring insurance companies to allow families to keep adult children on their plans until they are 26.

Others have benefited from rules phasing out annual and lifetime limits on the benefits an insured person can receive through their plan. Families with children who have pre-existing conditions have found that companies must accept their applications regardless of their child's health status.

And adults with health problems have found refuge in a state-run high-risk pool that is a transition to 2014, when health plans will have to accept all comers, not just children.

Continued here:

Health care reform: It lives!