Wow. What convoluted reasoning. No one knows nor cares that the Supreme Court said that Congress cannot mandate buying health insurance. The Supreme Court left the law in place, and everyone understands that. It sure looks like the mandate was approved.
While it is true that many people will opt to pay the penalty instead of buying insurance, that would have been the case without a court decision. Mandate or not, that choice was always there, and remains.
The decision was a travesty. On the one hand, Roberts said that Congress could not use the Commerce Clause to justify intruding further into our lives. On the other hand, Roberts said that if they just include a tax in there somewhere, they can do anything they want to do. He closed one door which was dubious to begin with, and opened another door which can only be closed by a Constitutional Amendment.
Put simply, Congress may tax and spend. This grant gives the Federal Government considerable influence even in areas where it cannot directly regulate. The Federal Government may enact a tax on an activity that it cannot authorize, forbid, or otherwise control. See, e.g., License Tax Cases, 5 Wall. 462, 471 (1867). And in exercising its spending power, Congress may offer funds to the States, and may condition those offers on compliance with specified conditions. See, e.g., College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd., 527 U. S. 666, 686 (1999) . These offers may well induce the States to adopt policies that the Federal Government itself could not impose. See, e.g., South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U. S. 203–206 (1987) (conditioning federal highway funds on States raising their drinking age to 21).
J. Roberts