WASHINGTON, D.C. - Lauren Burr has only a couple of weeks left as a college student.

Then, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in education from Ohio University, she'll move back in with her parents in Perry and look for substitute teaching jobs until she finds a long-term position. Subbing has no fringe benefits, but Burr, 23, can count on having health insurance through her father's plan at work.

Or so she hopes.

Like other graduating seniors, Burr joins a cadre of young Americans who lack jobs and rely on President Barack Obama's signature achievement, known by all sides as Obamacare, for their health care. Young adults who lack health insurance are assured of coverage under their parents' plans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. By the end of 2011, 2.5 million young adults -- 81,922 of them in Ohio -- had obtained coverage that way, the White House says.

But the U.S. Supreme Court could strike down the health care law when it rules on a constitutional challenge, probably in June. The law is unpopular in Ohio, polling shows, and Ohio voters have already said through a ballot initiative that they want to invalidate its mandate for nearly everyone to get health insurance.

Yet its proposed cancellation has the potential to anger young adults, an important voting bloc for Obama in November.

Young voters helped elect Obama in 2008, but their enthusiasm for the Democrat has waned somewhat since then, a result of liberal disappointment with the slow pace of change and a likely overall disappointment with the economy, says Peter L. Levine, an authority on youth voting who directs Tufts University's center on civic learning and engagement.

"A Supreme Court decision could draw attention to what the health care reform means to young people tangibly and thus strengthen support for the president," Levine says.

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a national co-chairman of the president's re-election campaign, says this is a "very significant issue, because these kids are getting out of college and some of them are not going to have jobs."

Although the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not have data limited only to recent college graduates, the current national unemployment rate for people under age 25 is 16.4 percent, or more than double the rate for the general population.

See the original post here:

Supreme Court decision on federal health care law could fire up young voters