ObamaCare Can Survive Without the Mandate

A ruling on ObamaCare is now expected Thursday, and the most widely anticipated outcome is that most of the law will be upheld but the individual mandate will be struck down. Though "conventional wisdom holds that the law is as good as dead" if that happens, writes Steve Kornacki at Salon, several analysts have shown that health care reform could actually survive, thanks to other provisions in the law that expand Medicaid access and subsidize private insurance plans for consumers.

Many currently uninsured people may take advantage of those provisions (90,000 Oregonians applied for Medicaid when Oregon expanded its rolls recently), which would mean that insurers would still see an infusion of young, healthy customers to offset the sick people they'd have to cover. In other words, we'd see "a significant, mandate-less expansion of coverage achieved without exploding costs or bankrupting insurers," Kornacki writes. The big question is what Democrats will do if the mandate is struck down—stand by the law or give up on it? Click for Kornacki's full column. (More ObamaCare stories.)