If the courts struck down the whole bill....

[Beet]

"For the health care industry, a decision striking down the entire ACA would be an absolute disaster. Physicians, hospitals, and private companies have been shifting how they practice medicine in anticipation of the ACA’s implementation. They’ve been creating accountable care organizations,[1] envisioning a significant reduction in uncompensated care, and enjoying increased Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement in primary care settings.[2] That will all vanish if the ACA is struck down. Moreover, seniors will pay more for prescription drugs and young adults will be taken off their parents’ insurance. The private insurance industry, which has seen its market shrink significantly over the last decade,[3] will see a real chance to reverse that trend disappear. According to one estimate, if the ACA is overturned, insurers may lose over $1 trillion in revenues between 2013 and 2020."

http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/health-care-constitutional-chaos

I think it would be a clear advantage to Obama, because while the mandate is unpopular, striking down the whole bill would mean chaos and I think people would correctly perceive it as overreaching. I mean, they've admitted they have no intention of reading the bill. They literally would have no idea what they were doing.

No one read it before voting for it, so why must the Sup Court justices be tortured?  

The Courts are supposed to show deference to the actual legislative branches, not be a legislative branch. Besides, the legislature can enact a law for whatever reason they want, while Court has to justify its decisions by determining whether something is unconstitutional. They can hardly do that without even knowing what it is.

[WhyteRain]

Frankly, I hope the Court takes this opportunity to overrule Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the wartime decision that implemented the dastardly "effects" test for the Interstate Commerce Clause.

[WhyteRain]

"For the health care industry, a decision striking down the entire ACA would be an absolute disaster. Physicians, hospitals, and private companies have been shifting how they practice medicine in anticipation of the ACA’s implementation. They’ve been creating accountable care organizations,[1] envisioning a significant ....

LOL ... what's funnier than leftists who care about the travails of Big Business?

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Wait --  Seniors will pay more but Big Business will get less?  Oh wait, is this the magic of government that we've seen make Europe what it is today (and what the USSR was 30 years ago)?  

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Wait -- if poor Big Biz "loses $1 trillion" doesn't that mean that consumers save $1 trillion?  Or are we back to the fairy dust of Big Government accounting again?

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Why am I not surprised this article was written by a law student (or professor) and not by anybody actually in the health insurance business?

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No one read it before voting for it, so why must the Sup Court justices be tortured?  
[/quote]

The Courts are supposed to show deference to the actual legislative branches, not be a legislative branch. Besides, the legislature can enact a law for whatever reason they want, while Court has to justify its decisions by determining whether something is unconstitutional. They can hardly do that without even knowing what it is.
[/quote]

Having worked at a state supreme court, I can tell you that the courts are not going to allow the legislative branch to usurp the doctrine of judicial review by writing laws so long --if this one's 2,400 pages, what's to stop the next from being 24,000 or 240,000 pages? -- and then saying to the courts "You can't overturn it unless you read every single word!"

I can tell you, too, that the justices will not only reject this ... "argument", but will be insulted that they even have to listen to it.

[Joe Biden 2020]

It will be interesting what the courts decide either way.  I have a funny feeling we will know something this week, or at least I hope so.

I think, so, that whatever is decided will have the effects diminished, but not erased entirely, by the time November 6 arrives.  It's still the end of June, still 4 1/2 months from November 6, so while this is a monumental decision forthcoming, the effects in early November will be less than what is perceived if nothing other than most Americans are not paying attention to the race just yet, and probably won't until at least after the Summer Olympics.  I suspect if this decision were to happen after 1 August, it would have a lot more effect.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I suppose hypothetically there would be more of an upside for Romney.  But I suspect John Roberts is smart enough to know that such a decision would destroy the legitimacy of his court, so I doubt he would vote for a total strikedown.  The vast majority of the bill's provisions haven't got the slightest thing to do with the "mandate," so I don't know where they would derive the legal justification for that kind of decision.

If the Court does choose to strike down the entire law on the basis of the mandate, the Justices will likely point to the lack of a severability clause in the original legislation. Absent such a clause, it's up to the Court has to decide how the mandate interacts with the rest of the law, and the lower court cases on the mandate provide ample precedent for any direction they decide to go.

[anvi]

Yes, fair enough; the absence of a severability clause in the law does give the court discretion.  But I think it would behoove SCOTUS, having made such a showcase of the oral arguments, to base their decision on a finding regarding the law's contents, and one would be hard pressed, as I see it, to make a credible case that even a majority of the bill's provisions were tethered to the "mandate."

I guess I just find this whole case to have the character of Alice in Wonderland.  We're calling something a "mandate" that has no enforcement provision.  We're using the sliding scale argument about Commerce Clause carte blanche for this law, which is explicitly limited to the regulation of the health care market, in the face of SCOTUS decisions from Gibbons vs. Ogden to Reich v. Gonzalez which have given Congress pretty much plenary authority over regulating commerce.   Hell, after what Scalia wrote in his opinion upholding Reich, for him to turn around now and knock down the "mandate," he'll have to become a contortionist. 

But, then again, every issue seems to be like that; up is down and down up nowadays, so perhaps Wonderland is our new normal.