The Obama administration maintains that its Affordable Care Act is a complex construct that's endangered if the Supreme Court finds its central feature -- the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance -- unconstitutional. It's certainly true that eliminating the "individual mandate" will immediately expose the plan as unworkable. It can only succeed by creating a broad, universal insurance pool that collects big premiums from the young and healthy. If the young and healthy aren't required to sign on, they won't. Hence, the pools won't be remotely large enough to pay for the older, sicker folks who get the best deal, and are bound to flock to the state exchanges.

In reality, the reform plan's success doesn't depend on the Supreme Court's decision at all. Its faulty design virtually guarantees that all the things the administration warns will happen if it loses will happen anyway. Even if it stands, the legislation will spawn insurance plans crowded with high-cost folks, driving premiums higher, hobbling competition as carriers abandon the exchanges, and leaving tens of millions of Americans uninsured.

"Having lost the argument, what to do? Bully. The New York Times loftily warned the Supreme Court that it would forfeit its legitimacy if it ruled against Obamacare, because with the 'five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors, the court will mark itself as driven by politics.'”

"Really? The administration’s case for the constitutionality of Obamacare was so thoroughly demolished in oral argument that one liberal observer called it 'a train wreck.' It is perfectly natural, therefore, that a majority of the Court should side with the argument that had so clearly prevailed on its merits. That’s not partisanship. That’s logic. Partisanship is four Democrat-appointed justices giving lockstep support to a law passed by a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president — after the case for its constitutionality had been reduced to rubble."

According to press reports, the Justices of the Supreme Court will cast their preliminary votes today on the outcome of the ObamaCare litigation. The conference will help determine who will be assigned the responsibility of writing the majority and minority opinions.

For more on the conference process, read here.

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First, its assault on the free exercise of religion. Only churches themselves are left alone. Beyond the churchyard gate, religious autonomy disappears. Every other religious institution must bow to the state because, by this administration's regulatory definition, church schools, hospitals and charities are not "religious," and thus have no right to the free exercise of religion -- no protection from being forced into doctrinal violations commanded by the state.

Second, its assault on free enterprise. To solve his own political problem, the president presumes to order a private company to enter into a contract for the provision of certain services -- all of which are free. And yet, this breathtaking arrogation of power is simply the logical extension of Washington's takeover of the private system of medical care -- a system Obama farcically pretends to be maintaining.

Under ObamaCare, the state treats private insurers the way it does government-regulated monopolies and utilities. It determines everything of importance. Insurers, by definition, set premiums according to risk. Not anymore. The risk ratios (for age, gender, smoking, etc.) are decreed by Washington. This is nationalization in all but name. The insurer is turned into a middleman, subject to state control -- and presidential whim.

Third, the assault on individual autonomy. Every citizen without insurance is ordered to buy it, again under penalty of law. This so-called individual mandate is now before the Supreme Court -- because never before has the already inflated Commerce Clause been used to compel a citizen to enter into a private contract with a private company by mere fact of his existence.

This constitutional trifecta -- the state invading the autonomy of religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen -- should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over one-sixth of the economy.