Obama's healthcare reform faces Supreme Court challenge Americans remain almost equally divided over the legislation with polls showing around 40 per cent of people approving and 40 per cent disapproving of the law, which has been the subject of rallies and petitions from both camps across America. At a meeting attended last week students gathered at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia to pledge support for the law, which guarantees children can remain on their parents' health insurance policies until they are 26. "I tried to commit suicide at the age of 16," said one young woman who suffered from chronic depression, "and I fear I might well do so again if I was to lose the health insurance that pays for my medications." Republican presidential candidates are vowing to abolish the reforms if elected, and thereby remove the most significant legacy of Mr Obama's first term. They accuse Mr Obama of trying to "socialise" healthcare, reducing individual choice and interfering wantonly in the lives of ordinary people. "It is past time to abolish the programme, root and branch," wrote Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the Republican nomination in an article to mark the second anniversary of the bill being signed into law. "What we need is a free market, federalist approach to making quality, affordable health insurance available to every American," he wrote. Rick Santorum, the conservative rival to Mr Romney for the nomination, has been even more virulent. "This is the beginning of the end of freedom in America," he warned. Once the government has control of your life, then they gotcha. Independent legal experts say the Supreme Court is, on balance, unlikely to strike down the law when it delivers its verdict possibly as early as this June, but healthcare is set to remain a hugely divisive issue in the run up to November's election. "If the Supreme Court strikes down the law, it will have a huge impact and will clarify for a lot of people how important general elections are," said Matthew Bennett of the left-leaning Third Way think tank in Washington.