This week, President Barack Obama did something no other president has done: He signed a bill to bring near universal health insurance coverage to Americans.

The bill that passed the House late Sunday will provide coverage to an additional 32 million people through Medicaid, subsidies to families and tax credits for businesses. It will bar insurers from dropping coverage when people get sick or refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions. For the first time, it will require every American to have coverage. The ultimate cost of the bill will be about $940 billion over the first decade after enactment, if the Senate concurs this week on a series of changes to the bill passed by the House in a separate measure.

The path to passage wound through a political thicket so overgrown with animus that it sometimes seemed like the legislation would never emerge. Obama has been called a socialist, a liar and a tyrant. With the final vote near, several Republicans, perched on the House balcony, led a crowd of "tea party" protesters below in derisive cheers against the bill. Some protesters shouted epithets at African-American and gay House Democrats as they walked to the Capitol. Two hecklers were removed from the House chamber itself.

Yet for all the divisiveness, House Democrats pushed ahead, and this bill, though flawed, is worth all the risks they took.

Besides extending coverage, the bill makes the most aggressive attempts ever to contain medical spending. It imposes an excise tax on high-value health plans, which should give an advantage to plans that hold down costs, establishes a Medicare Commission to evaluate spending and funds pilot projects designed to change the way hospitals are paid. Regrettably, the bill that "fixes" some of the perceived flaws in the measure delays the excise tax from 2013 to 2018. We remain concerned that the bill doesn't do enough to contain costs and leaves core cost-control measures to the whims of a future president and Congress.

And though the bill became law Tuesday, the fight is far from over. Republicans vow to take back control of Congress on a platform of repeal. Three attorneys general plan to sue, reasoning that the Constitution doesn't permit the federal government to mandate that its citizens buy health insurance. The partisan wounds opened by this wrenching debate will not be easily closed.

Democrats are betting that bringing essential fairness to health care will work in their favor. If there's any political justice, they'll be right. As Obama said Sunday night, "We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people."

We'll soon know whether the people agree.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.