Two parts of the legal challenge brought by 20 states -- including Georgia -- against President Barack Obama’s health care law can go to trial, a Florida federal judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson of Pensacola said he would hear the most significant arguments to the overhaul to determine if they were constitutional. He dismissed four others. Last week, another federal judge in Michigan threw out a similar lawsuit. Vinson set a hearing for Dec. 16. The lawsuits will likely wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Still in question in the Florida lawsuit were: 1) whether the mandate to force people to obtain health insurance or face penalty was legal; and 2) whether the overhaul would prompt an expansion of Medicaid that would financially burden the states.

“The Act is a controversial and polarizing law about which reasonable and intelligent people can disagree in good faith,” Vinson wrote in his 65-page decision. “There are some who believe it will expand access to medical treatment, reduce costs, lead to improved care, have a positive effect on the national economy, and reduce the annual federal budgetary deficit, while others expect that it will do exactly the opposite.”

Vinson also wrote that the mandate to purchase health insurance “is simply without prior precedent,” and “people have no choice and there is no way to avoid it.”

Health care overhaul has stirred strong debate in Georgia, including previous attempts by the state Legislature to block the federal action. On Thursday, local opponents declared victory, asserting that the law eventually would be declared unconstitutional. Supporters of the law stressed that the ruling did not represent a final decision and the court would uphold the law.

“This is a good victory,” said Bert Brantley, Gov. Sonny Perdue’s spokesman. “The governor strongly believes this law is an unconstitutional reach that Congress took.”

Parts of the law are in use, and Georgia already is pushing back. The overhaul offered states the opportunity to run their own high-risk insurance plan for consumers with pre-existing conditions. Like 19 other states, Georgia opted to have the federal government run its plan. Georgia was one of five states that declined to apply for a grant to help states improve their review of health insurance rates.

Expected to bring the single greatest cost to states is the expansion of Medicaid coverage for poor people. In Georgia, the state Department of Community Health has estimated the additional state costs would start at $100 million to $200 million a year when the program begins in earnest, and increase over a half-dozen years to upwards of $500 million a year.

“That’s going to be a major expense for Georgia and people here would be mandated to do what they may not have chosen to do,” Brantley said.

Among health care supporters, Cindy Zeldin of the nonprofit advocacy group Georgians for a Healthy Future said the law would go far to provide health insurance for many Georgians who don’t have access to insurance today.

Zeldin said the federal mandate to obtain insurance would ensure that people didn’t wait until they were sick or old to obtain it, which drives up costs for taxpayers and those with insurance.

“I don’t necessarily see this as a defeat,” Zeldin said. “I still don’t expect it to be overturned.”

The mandate for people to have medical insurance doesn’t occur until 2014, and the federal government has indicated it will pay all of the costs for the first three years.

“That is a huge infusion of federal dollars to Georgia,” Zeldin said, adding that while the federal portion eventually will be reduced, the state should be able to afford it.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal has said if elected he will continue seeking to overturn the law. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes has said he opposes the lawsuit, but would continue to pursue it because the state is obligated to do so.

Vinson largely agreed with the 20 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, saying Congress was intentionally unclear when it created penalties in the legislation. The states have argued that Congress is overstepping its constitutional authority by penalizing people for not buying health insurance.

The penalties for those who do not buy insurance are never referred to as taxes in the 2,700-page act, Vinson wrote. Attorneys for the Obama administration argued at a September hearing that the penalties should be considered a tax levied by Congress -- as allowed by its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

“One could reasonably infer that Congress proceeded as it did specifically because it did not want the penalty to be ‘scrutinized’ as a $4 billion annual tax increase,” Vinson wrote.

The administration’s attorneys told Vinson last month that without the regulatory power to ensure young and healthy people buy health insurance, the health care plan will not survive.

The health care act leaves states with the difficult choice of expanding their Medicaid programs and taking on major expenses or entirely withdrawing from the insurance program for the poor, Vinson wrote. In states like Florida -- where 26 percent of the state budget is devoted to Medicaid, according to the lawsuit -- the law amounts to coercion, Vinson wrote.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum praised the ruling, saying in a statement, “It is the first step to having the individual mandate declared unconstitutional and upholding state sovereignty in our federal system.”

McCollum filed the lawsuit just minutes after President Barack Obama signed the 10-year, $938 billion health care bill into law in March.

Stephanie Cutter, tapped by Obama to guide efforts to explain the law’s benefits, wrote in a White House blog late Thursday that the government expected to prevail.

“Having failed in the legislative arena, opponents of reform are now turning to the courts in an attempt to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government. This is nothing new. We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Right Act -- constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation, and all those challenges failed,” Cutter wrote.

Vinson’s ruling comes a week after District Judge George Caram Steeh in Detroit ruled that the mandate to get insurance by 2014 and the financial penalty for skipping coverage are legal. He said Congress was trying to lower the overall cost of insurance by requiring participation.

There is also a lawsuit pending in Virginia. A federal judge there has allowed the lawsuit to continue, ruling the overhaul raises complex constitutional issues.

Other states involved in the Florida lawsuit are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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