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Wasn't it necessary to first find out if it was even Constitutional to enact such a tax?

Sure. After the tax has been levied.

We can't allow them to call it a mandate just to justify considering the bill, then change it to a tax after the fact. If this precedent survives, the Supreme Court will have unlimited power.

Which I'm afraid has already happened.

We can't allow them to call it a mandate just to justify considering the bill, then change it to a tax after the fact.
That's just it! It wasn't done "after the fact".
As I gather from what the opinion says, from the way the bill was written in the first place everyone should have known the individual mandate was a tax to begin with!
The Democrats tried to sneak it through, plain and simple, with nobody being the wiser! That is not the end of the matter. Because the Commerce Clause does not support the individual mandate, it is necessary to turn to the Government’s second argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s enumerated power to “lay and collect Taxes.” Snip... Congress thought it could enact such a command under the Commerce Clause, and the Government primarily defended the law on that basis. But, for the reasons explained above, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress that power. Under our precedent, it is therefore necessary to ask whether the Government’s alternative reading of the statute—that it only imposes a tax on those without insurance—is a reasonable one. Snip... The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution. Granting the Act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read, for the reasons set forth below. It really isn't that hard to understand. They got what they asked for and now they have to tell the American people that they lied to them.
If it isn't the one thing then give us the other...and brother, did they ever get it!