By: Robert J. Terry

The Daily Record hosted its annual Health Care Heroes awards breakfast Wednesday morning at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore. It was a great event, and I’m not just saying that because The Daily Record pays my mortgage.

It’s a pleasure talking with the doctors, nurses, public health officials and other professionals working on the front lines in an industry so central to the state’s economy and so critical to the nation’s prosperity. Their commitment to their craft is inspiring.

I encourage you to check out the publication when it hits the streets and our website Friday.

That the event was held on the same day as the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing the landmark health care reform legislation into law wasn’t lost on me, or others in attendance.

Optimism and enthusiasm were to my eyes and ears the hallmarks of the networking and awards ceremony. I chatted with one longtime local entrepreneur, for example, who has an ambitious startup concept in the works with one of our Heroes.

Meantime, a variety of polls show that the percentage of Americans who support the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act hasn’t budged in the year since the bill was signed — a little less than four in 10 Americans support health care reform.

Many stories pegged to the measure’s one-year anniversary are devoted to political calculus — how opponents will try to derail the bill, how supporters will maneuver to keep it on track, what the mid-term elections will mean. One analyst describes it as “a race between those who want this law to take root and those who want to prevent this law from taking root.”

For a few hours Wednesday morning, however, the focus was on the work.