As Gov. Mary Fallin approached crucial decisions about health care reform in Oklahoma in the past two years, members of her staff routinely relied on advice from conservative political groups bent on destroying Obamacare.

More than 50,000 pages of emails released by the governor's office are notable for a lack of debate over the merits of various policy options. Instead, in document after document, the governor's staff frets over political messaging, responding to reporters and cajoling legislators.

At the beginning of Fallin's term in early 2011, the governor's aides were seemingly caught off guard by the virulent opposition in Oklahoma to anything related to the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

That experience, which led to a major defeat for the governor's attempt to use federal money to build a state marketplace for health insurance policies, seemed to guide the administration's approach to the key decisions in 2012 after the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion upholding portions of the health care law and leaving other parts up to states' discretion.