I'm literally sick with worry about what we're facing next week.
So what do I do? I read and read and read, hoping to find someone with something interesting or enlightening to say.
No one is better informed than Princeton health care economist Uwe Reinhardt, and his latest column in the New York Times strikes me as a reasonable outcome.
These are, generally speaking, the options before the Court
The core question before the court is whether the Commerce Clause in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution grants the federal government the authority to mandate individual Americans to purchase specified, minimally adequate health insurance coverage from private health insurers.Reinhardt thinks Option Two is most likely.. . .I recently posted a commentary on the options before the Supreme Court. Expanding upon that post a bit, I would describe the options before the Court thusly:
1. The Affordable Care Act is upheld as constitutional in all of its provisions.
2. Only the individual mandate is struck down, and it is deemed severable from the rest of the act.
3. Title 1 (Insurance Reform) of the act is struck down, but the rest of the act is upheld.
4. Both Titles 1 and 2 (Public Programs, including the expansion of Medicaid) are struck down, but the rest of the act is upheld.
5. The entire Affordable Care Act is struck down, on the grounds that the clause covering the individual mandate, deemed by the justices to be not authorized by the Commerce Clause, is deemed not severable from the rest of the bill.
If I had to bet, I would put my marker on the second option, the striking down of the individual mandate only. The majority of the justices may sincerely believe that the Commerce Clause does not authorize the mandate. In addition, some may not be averse to giving the president a little slap in the face. In any event, striking the mandate would not do much damage to the rest of the bill.