Other attorneys general have said the legislation violates state sovereignty by mandating that all Americans obtain health insurance by 2014.
Corbett issued his statement on a day when elected officials in both parties were taking sides over the bill that passed the U.S. House in dramatic fashion Sunday night.
Gov. Rendell, who said he worked to win key votes from Pennsylvania lawmakers to pass the bill, called the promised lawsuits by Corbett and others "nothing more than political grandstanding" at taxpayer expense.
Rendell said he believed the law would withstand a court challenge because such legislation is protected under the Constitution's supremacy clause, which says in essence that federal laws trump conflicting state law. But Rendell said that Corbett was free to file a suit and that as governor, he could do nothing to prevent it.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday at a news briefing that he, too, believed such suits would fail. "I think there's a pretty long-standing precedent on the constitutionality of this," Gibbs told reporters.
Corbett, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor in the May 18 primary, said he was consulting with attorneys general in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan, Texas, Utah, Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia to determine, among other things, whether their claims should be filed separately or in a single suit.
In the state House, Sen. Mike Folmer (R., Lebanon) said he planned to introduce a bill to prevent Pennsylvanians from being fined if they failed to obtain health insurance by 2014, as the bill calls for.
Rendell said that at the request of congressional Democratic leaders, he had called five or six undecided members of the caucus to try to persuade them to support President Obama's plan.
Rendell said he neither offered anything nor threatened to withhold support from anyone this campaign season but made the pitch that if House members were concerned that their "yes" votes might doom their reelections, it was a fight "worth losing for."
Contact staff writer Amy Worden at 717-783-2584 or aworden@phillynews.com.
This article includes information from the Associated Press.
