The Supreme Court Confirms Its Doubts as Arguments on Health Reform Law End

The third and final United States Supreme Court hearing about Barack Obama’s health care reform reinforced the impression today that there is a majority against the ratification of the law. The justices who could tip the balance to one side or the other asked about the legislation’s possibilities for survival if the mandate to have health insurance is eliminated.

Some of the justices who make up the conservative group openly demonstrated that they are in favor of revoking the law in its entirety, given the difficulty of dividing it up between sections that are constitutional and those that are not. “I mean, do you contemplate them bringing litigation and saying — I guess the insurers would be the most obvious ones — without — without the mandate, the whole thing falls apart,” Justice Antonin Scalia said, defending that, if the mandate to have insurance is overturned, the whole law should be declared unconstitutional. Scalia maintained that it wasn’t realistic to think that this court could review every line of the law and decide which of them were tied to the mandate and which of them weren’t.

The two justices who are considered to be more moderate within the conservative group, John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy, likewise showed doubts about the advisability of maintaining the law if the insurance mandate is removed, although both left the door open to taking the government’s arguments into consideration.

The four progressive justices made a strong effort to defend the reform’s value and its full constitutionality. Justice Sonia Sotomayor even reprimanded her colleagues for meddling in a task that belongs to the legislative branch.

The Supreme Court won’t hand down its decision until the end of spring, but these days of the hearing leave us with the impression that the split of five against four can stand for now, which would mean the reversal, five months before the election, of the Obama presidency’s biggest reform.