Obama's price

Since the inception of his presidency, Obama has made the healthcare reform a top priority of his domestic agenda, and apparently paid a price for it.

As Obama and his Democratic allies in the Congress had been working over the past months to overcome differences on many tough issues such as abortion, the public option, taxing the wealthy and offending interests like the insurance companies, the reform began to lose the trust of American public.

Since July of this year, more Americans have disapproved of how Obama handled public healthcare than those approved, according to Pollster.com, which averaged several major polls to mitigate potential bias.

At present, 52 percent of Americans disapprove of Obama's job performance on healthcare to 42 percent of those approve, forming the largest negative gap since Obama took office, said Pollster.com.

A survey conducted last week by The Washington Post together with ABC found that only 37 percent of the respondents expected the quality of the new healthcare system to be better than the current one.

The controversial healthcare reform now has been regarded by many pollsters as one of the major causes of the decline of Obama's overall popularity.

Republicans, eyeing potential gains in the 2010 midterm elections, are seeking to link healthcare reform with a deeper American concern about Obama's tendency to cast government as the great problem-solver.

Meanwhile, due to the divergences on the healthcare legislation, what at the stake is not only Obama's political capability and credibility, but also the unity of his party.

Obama's aides recognized that the Senate bill lacks some provisions the Obama administration had pursued, and Vice President Joe Biden conceded that the bill was "not perfect."

Yet, analysts still predicted that with a strong Democratic majority in Congress, Obama still stands a great chance to see the Congress pass the healthcare bill.

But the path to that destination will not be smooth, and he even has to give up some of his goals along the way, they said.