Supreme Court decisions at 10:00 this morning….Scotusblog

Amy Howe, Anticipating the health-care decision: In Plain English,  SCOTUSblog”:

…there are four questions before it. Three of those questions revolve around the “minimum coverage” provision, popularly known as the “individual mandate.” 

…But before the Court can decide whether the mandate is constitutional, it must first decide whether it can even rule on this question at all. 

…all that anyone will really be interested in with regard to the AIA is the Court’s bottom line: can it review the mandate issue or not? If it agrees with both sides that it can, all eyes will then turn to that constitutional question. Most Americans care about the bottom line: is the mandate constitutional? Even if the Justices disagree on the reasoning, the mandate would still survive.

Finally, as long as the Court doesn’t conclude that the entire ACA must fall, it will have to resolve one more issue: does another provision of the Act violate the Constitution because it effectively coerces the states, requiring them to comply with the ACA’s expanded Medicaid eligibility requirements or risk losing all of the money that they receive for Medicaid from the federal government?