Kennedy, Roberts Likely To Determine Fate Of Mandate

[savalez]

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy — two critical swing votes in the health care reform case before the Supreme Court — asked skeptical questions about the individual mandate Tuesday, but rounded out the arguments with some sympathy for the federal government’s broad power to regulate health insurance.

With reform supporters battered by early analysis suggesting the court’s conservatives were hostile to the health care law’s requirement that Americans purchase health insurance, Roberts’ and Kennedy’s more balanced questions renewed at least a little hope that the law will be upheld.

~snip~

Despite their tough questions, both Kennedy and Roberts indicated sympathy with the view that health insurance is a unique market that may require a unique approach to regulate — and that’s central to the constitutional question at hand.

“I think it is true that if most questions in life are matters of degree,” Kennedy said, “in the insurance and health care world, both markets — stipulate two markets — the young person who is uninsured is uniquely proximately very close to affecting the rates of insurance and the costs of providing medical care in a way that is not true in other industries.”


http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/kennedy-roberts-look-poised-to-determine-fate-of-mandate.php?ref=fpa

[backscatter712]

1. My guess is that it's 5-4, with Kennedy voting to uphold. n/t

[BlueDemKev]

4. Kennedy won't vote with the liberal judges unless.....

....one of the other conservative judges (i.e.--Roberts) joins him. I doubt Kennedy will want to carry all the burden of casting the decisive vote in favor of health insurance reform. I'm just not hopeful after what we saw this morning.

Scalia should be ashamed of himself for his behavior this morning. Comparing the medical care industry to the automobile industry? What a prick! He's even willing to gut a precedent that HE personally established less than ten years ago just to spite President Obama.

[savalez]

5. Not to mention

he seemed to have used a RW talking point - Broccoli.

[BlueDemKev]

6. Broccoli was anathema to conservatives when Bush, Sr. was in office

But times have changed....after all, Republicans used to be "for" the individual mandate back then, also.

[elleng]

2. Whatever tpm says,

in this instance goes along with my wishes, BAD IDEA to bet on what Supremes will do..

Oral Argument, re: Mandate, now being broadcast on C-Span radio.

[Brooklyn Dame]

3. Big business will prevail in this decision

This crooked far right court knows that the insurance companies stand to benefit.

http://borderlessnewsandviews.com/2012/03/government-health-care-at-its-finest/

[hifiguy]

7. I think it will be 6-3 to uphold

with Kennedy and Roberts in the majority - as CJ, Roberts gets to designate who writes the opinion if he is in the majority. That way he can have some control over the opinion even if he chooses not to write it himself. I don't think that the SCOTUS is looking for another controversy right now what with Citizens United still fresh in the minds of many.