Pa. Gov urges administration to fast-track reform lawsuits

Pennsylvania’s Republican governor, who sued to block healthcare reform last year when he was the state’s attorney general, told lawmakers on Wednesday the Obama administration should fast-track challenges to the law to the Supreme Court. 

Gov. Tom Corbett, who joined with 12 other attorneys general to challenge the law last year just hours after President Obama signed it, said the numerous lawsuits again healthcare reform have caused widespread confusion about states' obligations to implement the overhaul.

"Pennsylvania and all other states need clarity," Corbett told two Pennsylvania House members Wednesday morning during a field hearing in the state.

As attorney general last year, Corbett’s decision to join in a multi-state lawsuit clashed with then-Gov. Ed Rendell’s (D) support of the law. In the end, 26 states joined the lawsuit before a federal judge in Florida struck down the entire law in January.

The Florida judge ruled against the constitutionality of the law’s requirement for individuals to purchase insurance and said the whole law must be struck down because the so-called “individual mandate” could not be severed from the rest of it. Another federal judge earlier this year struck down only the individual mandate in a case brought by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R). Meanwhile, three federal judges have upheld the mandate.

Corbett’s request will likely fall on deaf ears, however. The administration recently urged the Supreme Court to let the Cuccinelli challenge play out through the normal appeals process, arguing that there’s plenty of time before the individual mandate becomes effective in 2014. The administration also noted that some appeals courts are already hearing the challenges on an accelerated timeline.