4 perspectives on Obama health care law

— -- One is a young, healthy paramedic who can't afford health care coverage for himself. Another is a breast cancer survivor with leukemia bouncing from private insurance to Medicaid to Medicare. A third is an ailing ex-smoker who believes citizens, not the government, should buy insurance or pay the consequences. And then there is the feed store owner who cannot offer insurance to her employees.

During the course of the past three years, they and others enjoyed — or endured — their figurative 15 minutes of fame on the public stage as President Obama fought to pass his health care overhaul and protect it from legal and political challenges.

As the Supreme Court prepares to hear an unprecedented six hours of oral arguments over three days in the legal challenge to the law next week, these men and women will be watching with particular interest.

The case — arguably the most important since Bush v. Gore in 2000 helped determine the president — carries enormous implications for the nation's health care system, the 2012 elections and the balance of power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. Polls show Americans remain deeply divided about the law, fully two years after it was signed.

The issues before the court — the individual mandate and whether the law can survive without it, the penalty for not getting insurance, the expansion of Medicaid and more — will decide the law's fate. The court's decision, expected in June, will determine the fates of people on both sides who face spiraling costs and coverage limits, rising business expenses and the prospect of extended government intervention.

These four people represent the larger forces still wrangling over the law. Their stories are very different, but their physical, financial and emotional situations are shared by millions:

Young, healthy and uninsured

Travis Ulerick is just the sort of person who would be required to buy insurance under the threat of financial penalty starting in 2014.

Ironically, he's also the person who introduced President Obama at his first White House health care event in March 2009, when Ulerick was a strong supporter of overhauling the system. In his remarks, Ulerick said, "People in my town can't afford health care costs. They can't afford doctors' visits, and they can't afford ambulance rides."

Since then, his support for the president's effort has waned somewhat. He wanted more compromise with Republicans on issues such as limiting medical malpractice awards and combating fraud. And he never imagined that after the bill became law, he would be without insurance.

Ulerick, 28, left his job as a paramedic with the Indianapolis International Airport Fire Department to take a similar position with his hometown fire department in Dublin, Ind. But the new job came without health insurance, and he couldn't afford COBRA coverage or a new policy on the individual market.

He's hoping that come 2014, the new health care exchanges planned under the law will help to bring down costs. In the meantime, he's also hoping that he doesn't get sick. His only serious brush with the health care system came in 2010, when an accident sent metal into his eye, and he went to the emergency room. "Luckily, I was insured at that point," he says.