Romney presses attacks on Obamacare before ruling

Republican Mitt Romney stepped up his criticism on Tuesday of President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, saying if the U.S.

Supreme Court does not overturn the 2010 healthcare overhaul when it decides its fate this week he would dump it if elected in November.

Eager to change the subject back to Obama's economic stewardship after nearly two difficult weeks focusing on immigration, Romney accused Obama of taking his eye off the ball when he pushed the healthcare measure through Congress in 2010.

"Instead of focusing on the big issue, the economy, he focused on his healthcare reform, called Obamacare," Romney, set to challenge the Democratic president in the November 6 election, told a crowd at a machinery manufacturer in Salem, Virginia.

At the mention of " Obamacare" - the derisive nickname critics have given the law - the crowd erupted in boos.

The Supreme Court is scheduled on Thursday to rule on a legal challenge posed against the law by 26 of the 50 U.S. states and a small business trade group that argued the measure violates the U.S. Constitution.

Romney said if the high court justices deem the law unconstitutional, "then the first three and a half years of the president's term will have been wasted on something that has not helped the American people."

"If it stands, we are going to get rid of Obamacare and I'm going to stop it on day one," Romney added.

The 2010 law, which constitutes the U.S. healthcare system's biggest overhaul in nearly 50 years, sought to provide health insurance to more than 30 million previously uninsured Americans and to slow down soaring medical costs.

Critics say it meddles in the lives of individuals and in the business of the states.

The justices could uphold the law, strike down certain provisions or overturn the whole thing.

Romney enacted healthcare changes as governor of Massachusetts that bore similarities to the law Obama signed. But Romney argues that the federal law is killing jobs.