Second of two stories on Mitt Romney and the state health care overhaul.

On a sunny autumn afternoon in October 2008, Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, met New Hampshire portrait artist Richard Whitney at the State House and went to the governor’s office he once occupied on the third floor.

About eight months earlier, Romney had dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and his successor, Deval Patrick, had arranged for them to use his office to shoot photos to be used for Romney’s official portrait, which would be unveiled the following year.

The artist and former governor had already met at Romney’s vacation home in Wolfeboro,, N.H., to discuss the painting, and Romney was clear on the image he wanted to convey for posterity.

He would be at his desk, wearing a light blue business suit and tie. Visible in the frame would be symbols of what he held dear and how he wanted to be remembered.

One was a photo of Ann, center of his personal universe.

The other was an official-looking document, with the symbol of the medical profession — the caduceus — embossed in gold on the cover. It stood for the Massachusetts health care law, passed in 2006, his final year as governor. Easily the most memorable achievement of his political career, it is now perhaps the biggest hurdle to achieving his presidential dream.

“As long as the symbol was there, that was important,’’ Whitney said. “He wanted to be remembered for that.’’

At the time, Romney thought the revolution in health care that he, more than anyone, drove into law would redound to his benefit as a presidential candidate. Who else on the Republican side had tried to do anything as difficult or ambitious — much less gotten it done?

It has, instead, been linked in infamy, in his critics’ eyes, with the national health overhaul pushed through by President Obama. Romney has given up trying to distance himself from his own creation, though he rejects the comparison to “ObamaCare.’’

The greater question now isn’t whether the Massachusetts overhaul is fairly named as his — it is — but whether the innovative changes he pushed through have worked as intended.

It is a much easier question to ask than to answer.

A detailed Globe examination of voluminous health care and financial data, and interviews with key figures in every sector of the health care system, makes it clear that while there have been some stumbles — and some elements of the effort merit a grade of “incomplete’’ — the overhaul has, after five years, worked as well as or better than expected: