SCOTUS Will Uphold the Mandate; No, SCOTUS Will Strike Down the Mandate

In other words, no one has a clue.

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s legal reporter, is all but certain the mandate to purchase health care insurance in the Affordable Care Act is toast:

“This was a train wreck for the Obama administration. This law looks like it’s going to be struck down,” Toobin said on CNN. “All of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong.”

“The only conservative justice who looked like he might uphold the law was Chief Justice Roberts who asked hard questions of both sides, all four liberal justices tried as hard as they could to make the arguments in favor of the law, but they were — they did not meet with their success with their colleagues,” Toobin said.

Hold on there, kemosabe — Brian Beutler noticed that “in a little-noticed exchange Monday, conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts may have tipped his hand that he’s entertaining the possibility that the health care law’s individual mandate can be upheld on a constitutional basis that’s different from the one supporters and opponents have made central to their arguments.”

In other words, we’re all just going to have to wait until June, and probably the end of June, and go slowly but surely insane for three months.