ObamaCare Predictions Thread

Via Vic, Patterico guesses 5-4 overturn, all of it.

If the mandate goes, most of the law will have to go, because much relies on the mandate. You can't mandate that insurance companies cover anyone who signs up, even the desperately sick, without making sure they're not gaming the system in that manner. And I imagine that means the state exchanges would have to go.

I could see some smaller parts of it being allowed to stand -- requiring insurance to cover "children" up to 26. I say this because as far as I know that part of the law wasn't challenged (or at least the Supreme Court didn't certify that question and have arguments on it -- they have no record upon which to rule on that part of the law, except to strike down the whole of the law as incomplete without the mandate and unconstitutional, in the whole, as written).

Given Kennedy's decision in the Arizona immigration case, I can see him once again trying for some kind of "one for you, and one for you too" split decision.

There may be a few more freestanding bits of the law like that permitted to stand.

Here's one prediction I think is untrue: E.J. Dionne says you'll miss ObamaCare when it's gone.

Were the health-care law to be eviscerated, those who battled so hard on its behalf might draw at least bittersweet comfort from what could be called the Joni Mitchell Rule, named after the folk singer who instructed us that “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

I predict my reaction will be less informed by the Joni Mitchell Rule and more informed by what I call the Prodigy Rule.

posted by Ace at 12:36 PM

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