analyst judge andrew napolitano live outside the supreme court. you know, there may have been plenty of people who thought this law was going to live in one way or another. but i didn t hear too many predicting it would come down this way. no. shep. and i confess that i was wrong as were many of the people with whom you and i associate and discuss these things. this was a bizarre and unique combination of a conservative chief justice and the four liberals finding a way to have the law held as constitutional that even the law and even those who wrote it didn t say. who would have thought that this whole big 2700 page statute was really a tax, not a regulation of commerce. not a regulation of medicine, not a regulation of healthcare, but a tax on people? because congress power it regulate is limited. but congress power to tax is virtually unlimited. and the chief justice and the majority of this court articulated and underscored that today. shepard: you know, look back to bush v. g
this law was gone. sure. i mean the dissenters unanimously, i mean no disagreement among them. justices ask a lee a kennedy, thomas and alito said the entire statute is unconstitutional. shep, they didn t even reach this issue of whether this is a tax. they just reached the issue that this is a private human behavior that the constitution doesn t authorize the congress to regular regulate under their view of the constitution end of the story. shepard: i thought it interesting before we go here, judge, that the chief justice said this is not mine to block it s mine to make work if i can. you played a great tape of him a few minutes ago saying going to going to be umpire not throw the pitches or catch the ball. his job is to find a way to make this constitutional. even if it s a narrow way and he did.
the justices see it as a tax saved it chief justice roberts wrote: the affordable care act s requirement that certain pairs pay a financial penalty for not paying health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax because the constitution permits such a tax, it our role to forbid it. four justices descented unanimously and strongly they wrote to say that the individual mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. judicial tax writing is particularly troubling and then they ended by writing, in our view. the act before us is invalid in its entirety. so without justice roberts, the health law was dead, all of it. instead, because of the ruling of the man president george w. bush appointed to the court the health care overhaul stands largely untouched. here is what some of it means for you right. now the law allows dependent children to stay on their parent s health plans
gentleman, you both were in the session of supreme court while the arguments were going on. walter dillingdillinger, tell me how you think the court is going to rule tomorrow. lawrence, first of all, i don t know. okay, let s start there, and now okay, get that out of the way. now let s go on and predict it. okay. if i had to guess, i think the court s going to uphold it 6-3. the chief justice writing the opinion. and the reason is, this is a simple question of whether this law is within the subject matter scope of a regulation of commerce. and it regulates 1/6 or 7th of the national economy. and second, if they were to hold the mandate valid, which is really just an incentive to have insurance coverage, there s no telling how much of the law unravels. and this is a law nor a hundred million americans, they don t have to worry about the caps on the amount of insurance they can. for 50 million americans, it
governor romney put in place in massachusetts. he has run from it, governor romney. the president has stuck in there. despite taking all of these blows. so that is his point. whereas speaker boehner is saying no, no, no. we are going to tear this down. take a listen. well, it should be pretty clear by now that i didn t do this because it was good politics. i did it because i believed it was good for the country. i did it because i believed it was good for the american people. the real outcome of today s decision is to strengthen our resolve to make sure that this law is, in fact, repealed. the president may be vulnerable is the fact that it is standing on the fact that congress has the ability to tax as you mentioned. even though the president repeat i had lid during the health repeatedly said this is not going to be a tax increase. the republicans will hit on that. they think that s an opportunity. the view inside the white house this is not a tax. this is a choice people have.