The Supreme Court and Obamacare: Eight Possible Outcomes

Please keep yourself informed on this one.

The Supreme Court and Obamacare:
Eight Possible Outcomes

...there are several outcomes that will carry the legal force of a tsunami and could change parts of the constitutional landscape for decades to come.

The four issues before the Court in NFIB v. Sebelius are:
1. Whether the Anti-Injunction Act (AIA) regards the individual mandate as a tax, and as such federal courts lack jurisdiction to decide this case until the individual mandate goes into effect in 2014.

2. Whether Obamacare’s requirement that individual Americans must purchase and maintain federally-approved forms of health insurance starting in 2014—the infamous individual mandate in Section 1501—exceeds Congress’ powers under the Commerce Clause, Taxing Clause, and/or Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution. 

3. Whether Obamacare’s massive Medicaid expansion that requires states to pay part of the cost and could penalize any state that refuses to go along with these requirements by stripping all Medicaid funds from that state, found in Section 2001, exceeds Congress’ power under the Spending Clause of the Constitution, thereby violating state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.

4. If either the individual mandate (or the Medicaid expansion) is struck down, whether it can be “severed” from the rest of the 2,700-page Obamacare statute, and if not, whether the invalid section can be partially severed to save most of Obamacare, or whether it is “nonseverable,” meaning the entire statute must be struck down completely.