Colorado and Alabama leaders offer different views on health law decision

Colorado's governor says the state will continue to build its insurance exchange and to advance other elements of the health law regardless of the Supreme Court's ruling. Meanwhile, Alabama's attorney general predicts the court will strike down the law.

Health Policy Solutions (a Colo. news service): Supreme Court Health Ruling Could Hit Struggling 20-Somethings
Regardless of the Supreme Court's ruling, [Colo. Gov. John] Hickenlooper and others say Colorado will continue to build the exchange, ensure that children with pre-existing conditions can access health insurance and fight for reductions in costs while cutting the number of uninsured in the state. … Among those who could feel the pain first are 20-somethings. Unemployment rates among young people, ages 18 to 24, are the highest since the federal government began tracking that data in the 1940s. In the past, health insurance plans routinely dropped an employee's dependents once they were 19 or at 22 if they were full-time students (Kerwin McCrimmon, 6/13).

The Birmingham News:  Alabama Attorney General Predicts High Court To Overturn Obamacare
Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange predicts the U.S. Supreme Court will declare Obama's Affordable Care Act unconstitutional when it rules, possibly by the end of this month. … Strange discussed several key legal cases facing Alabama and the nation. He called universal health care and the state's immigration law "historic cases" that could shape the nation for years to come.  Strange said the president's health care act has serious implications to religious freedom (Singleton III, 6/12).

In other news, Politico Pro explores the policy reactions that might occur in red states if the law is overturned -

Politico Pro: Red States Could Pursue Slimmed Down Exchanges
Some conservative experts see reasons to hope that the states that have been fighting the health care reform law could become hotbeds of health policymaking if the ACA falls. They say the work many red states have been quietly doing to comply with the law in case they lose in the Supreme Court could be repurposed to create state-based reforms on a more conservative model. Some states, for instance, may look at their own version of Utah's small-business insurance exchange. These alternative approaches are unlikely to address a key goal of President Barack Obama's health care reform law -; expanding coverage to millions of uninsured people -; in part because without the federal law, they wouldn't have the federal cash for subsidies. But lawmakers in conservative states could still see an opportunity to address some problems and lay down a marker for eventual broader reforms requiring federal action (Feder, 6/14).