By AMY JONES / Associate Editor

Gov. Robert Bentley issued a scathing response June 28 to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Barack Obama’s controversial health care program, the Affordable Care Act.

“I am deeply disappointed by today’s Supreme Court decision. The health care law is an overreach by the federal government that creates more regulation, bureaucracy and a dramatic increase in costs to taxpayers,” Bentley said in a press release. “The ACA is the single worst piece of legislation to come out of congress. This law must be repealed.”

Bentley said the law simply results in bigger government, which encroaches on the free market.

“People need more choices, not fewer choices,” he said in the release. “Bigger government is not the answer. Market-based solutions are the best solutions to giving the public the most affordable options.”

Shelby County Republican Chairman Freddy Ard referred to the ACA as the “largest and most burdensome tax increase in history.”

“Instead of finding ways to abate the out-of-control spending practices in Washington, Congress gave us ObamaCare, the effects of which predominantly will not be felt until 2014,” Ard said in a release. “The Supreme Court had the opportunity to dismantle ObamaCare entirely by rejecting the constitutionality of the individual mandate, yet failed to do so and instead affirmed the most intrusive reach of federal powers in history.”

Ard called for voters to elect a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, while also electing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, so the ACA can be repealed.

U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., also said the ACA amounted to a tax increase and referred to it as “terrible policy” and a “contraption that will never work.”

“The Supreme Court may not have rejected ObamaCare, but two-thirds of Americans do because it reduces quality and increases costs,” Shelby said.

The Affordable Care Act mandates that previously uninsured Americans must purchase insurance or pay a penalty.