Chances Omabacare is Overturned

The Supreme Court is expected to make its ruling on the PPACA, aka ObamaCare, by the end of next week, at the latest. Intrade.com, a prediction market which allows people to put their money where their mouths are, has the chance of ObamaCare's individual mandate being overturned by the Supreme Court at around 75% at the time of this post.

While the law itself is very complex, with the mandate being just 1 component, the Justices have essentially 3 options available to them. Uphold the law, strike down the law, or strike certain provisions from the law. In my opinion, the Justices should choose door #1 or #2 and avoid door #3 like the plague.

In order to strike down certain provisions in the law, like the mandate, the Justices would have to get into the heads of the legislators and try to decide what the law would have looked like had the provision in question not been available. This is a very dangerous thing to do, as the Justices would be crafting their own legislation from the bench, which is not what the court should be doing. Additionally, Congress failed to include a severability clause in the law, which is a clause that states if one portion of the law is found unconstitutional it does not invalidate the rest of the law. That means if the Justices find one portion of the law invalid, they essentially have to strike down the entire thing.

Personally, I think the chances the mandate is overturned are only 50-50, and the law itself at 60-40 to being upheld in full. I just don't have that much faith in any branch of government anymore to stand up for liberty or our Constitution. I'd be thrilled to be proven wrong, however.