Gail Amundson is trying to remember who said something to the effect of "a mind stretched by a new idea never goes back to the same shape."

Turns out she's paraphrasing words from an influential U.S. Supreme Court Justice of the past, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in reference to what promises to be one of the current Supreme Court's most influential decisions in decades - the much anticipated ruling on the groundbreaking law nicknamed "Obamacare," which is expected later this month.

Amundson's point echoes a point made by Methodist Medical Center CEO Debbie Simon and many others in the health care industry.

No matter what the Supreme Court decides, the Affordable Care Act has stretched the country's idea of health care and it's not going back. More than 50 provisions of the law have already been implemented, many of them not only accepted but well-liked, according to opinion polls.

"Health care is in the process of remaking itself as we speak," says Amundson, CEO of Quality Quest for Health of Illinois. "The health care reform bill contributed to that in a significant way."

Adds Simon, "Health care reform, in one way or another, will continue."

Considering the nation's health care costs, the billion-dollar question is what's "one way or another" and how will it be financed?

Even before the Supreme Court's long-awaited ruling, three major insurers have already announced they intend to continue several of the law's most popular provisions, including allowing young people to stay on their parents' insurance plans until the age of 26 and eliminating co-pays for preventive health care benefits, such as immunizations.

And even before that, four years before President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, the forerunner of Quality Quest, a collaboration of employers, insurers, health care providers and health care recipients, began the process of remaking health care in central Illinois.

Many of the law's components are already evident locally, such as health care providers' moves to electronic records or OSF Saint Francis Medical Center's involvement as a pilot accountable care organization, designed to improve quality while lowering costs.

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Area health care officials say reform will continue one way or another