I have a hunch how the court ruling is going to go down.

[RDANGELO]

They are going to rule that the government cannot mandate that an individual buy health insurance, but when an uninsured person seeks medical care, that is when they can assess a penalty because the individual is making the decision that he wants medical care. Kennedy will take the lead on this. Just a hunch.

[CAPHAVOC]

1. No can happen

They can not change the law. Only rule if it is Constitutional.

[RDANGELO]

2. I'm not saying that.

I am saying that they will tell them under what circumstances they could impose the penalty, simmilar to when O'connor suggested provisinary ballots in Bush v Gore.

[zipplewrath]

3. Which is how it should have been done to begin with

Basically, they should have said that you don't have to have insurance, but if you get sick within some distance of buying the insurance (5 months, 1 year, something) the insurance company could either charge you a higher premium for some period of time, or there could be some higher deductible or something.

There'd have to be rules to protect folks moving between insurance policies, especially after losing a job or something. But basically at some point they notify you that you have 90 days to get a policy, or you'll be subject to this constraint. Medicare has features like this where you have to sign up when you become eligible or be subject to higher premiums later.

Of course single payer would solve much of this.

[louis-t]

4. It will go down on party lines.

5 to 4, I don't care what any of the right-wing activist judges say during the proceedings. In the end, it will be straight party line.