Second Guessing the Supreme Court on the Health Care Ruling

I've mad it pretty clear that I favor a continuation of what the GOP likes to deride as "Obamacare."  In fact, I'd go even further and state that we need a single payer nationalized system along the lines of France and some other European countries that pay far less over all for health care, have quality health care delivery and provide preventive care.  Nothing less will force the medical professions, hospital systems that play monopoly like games with hospitals and referring physicians to stop raping those with health insurance to make up for the millions of Americans who have no health care coverage.  Andrew Sullivan looks at what some of the predictions on tomorrow's Supreme Court ruling will look like. 

SCOTUSBlog's Tom Goldstein bets the mandate will survive:

I believe the mandate will not be invalidated tomorrow. Far less important, I expect the principal opinion will be written by the Chief Justice; a majority of the Court will find it has jurisdiction; and the challenge to the Medicaid expansion will be rejected.

Tomasky differs:

This is easy. I take the darkest and most cynical possible view of the conservative majority; I believe, as I've written, that they are politicians in robes (with the partial exception of Kennedy); as such, I believe that they will behave here like politicians, and they will render the decision that will inflict the maximum possible political damage on Obama and the Democrats. That means overturning the mandate 5-4.

Walter Dellinger bets they'll split the baby:

[A] compulsory mandate would be unconstitutional but a financial incentive that leaves the choice to the individual would be OK. The practical effect would be to uphold all the operative provisions of the Affordable Care Act, while firmly planting a liberty flag that would limit future Congresses.

Andrew's own prediction:   It will strike down the mandate alone.

I don't presume to know, especially given the partisanship behavior of Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas.   Personally, I simply know that what we had before the AHA was totally inefficient cost wise and broken and not working for many millions of Americans. If AHA is struck down, something needs to be done to deal with the broken health care system.  It's unfortunate that many voters cannot grasp that we are already paying for the uninsured through hospital bills that are sky high compared to the rest of the world and a system that ignores preventive care and puts off treatment until hugely expensive catastrophic illness has developed. For the same over all expenditure we could have a system that doesn't treat far too many citizens as disposable garbage and could rein in costs for those with health care coverage.