OK, I was wrong. Chief Justice Roberts swung to the left and Kennedy did not. Amazing. I’ll have to scrutinize Roberts’s voting record more closely before passing him off as ideologically pure. Here’s the full ruling if you have a lot of free time. He actually upheld the mandate under the federal government’s Tax Power and not the Commerce Clause, while Ginsberg would have upheld it under both. Interesting, certainly a blow to conservatives.

Being uninsured myself, I have mixed opinions about the 2014 individual mandate, but what is known from models like Mass. is that it will reduce overall health care spending and create more competitive private insurance plans.

For a while this morning, Cable News was reporting that the mandate was struck down before they got “conflicting information.”

This is what happens when they don’t let in cameras.

What the Medicaid part of the ruling means according to SCOTUSblog:

The Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion is divided and complicated. The bottom line is that: (1) Congress acted constitutionally in offering states funds to expand coverage to millions of new individuals; (2) So states can agree to expand coverage in exchange for those new funds; (3) If the state accepts the expansion funds, it must obey by the new rules and expand coverage; (4) but a state can refuse to participate in the expansion without losing all of its Medicaid funds; instead the state will have the option of continue the its current, unexpanded plan as is.

Senator Harry Reid ‏@SenatorReid

Now that this matter is settled, I hope we can work together to create jobs and secure this country’s economic future