And now we wait. Unless they surprise everyone and issue an opinion much sooner than expected, it’ll be late June before the Supreme Court’s nine justices reveal their decision on health care’s future.
The conventional wisdom coming out of three days of hearings [1] covering the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is that the law’s individual mandate, if not the entire health care law, is in danger of being declared unconstitutional. My gut feeling since the court announced it would take up the health care law has been that the court’s five conservative justices will find an exception to judicial restraint and issue an activist decision striking down the law. But really, who knows? There are many paths the court can take.
So, after three days of arguments, here are a few thoughts:
The hypotheticals kicked around during Tuesday’s hearing on the individual mandate, that if the government can compel citizens to buy health insurance then what is keeping it from forcing citizens to buy broccoli [2], burial plots and cellphones, were ridiculous. They were imaginary arguments that should have been beneath the court’s justices.
The comments by Chief Justice John Roberts (cellphones) and Justices Antonin Scalia (broccoli) and Samuel Alito (burial insurance) got more media attention Tuesday than, say, the relevant 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn, but, well, what can you say? Such is the nature of today’s politics and, apparently, jurisprudence.