I think they intentionally made the bill ‘one big package’ in order to keep small pieces of the bill from being stripped off by Republicans (death by a thousand paper cuts). They made it one big house of cards because they believed no one could successfully challenge the core elements and were only fearful of repubs chipping away at it. It never occurred to them that core elements might be found unconstitutional and now they really can’t take it apart now to ‘save the key parts’ because well..it’s ‘one big package’.
Someone on another thread pointed out that insurance industry lobbyists probably got it structured this way so that if the mandate (and 50 million new customers at gunpoint) went away they’d be off the hook for the rest of it.
They have been pushing for this for nearly 3 decades. They finally had all three branches of government under their control and they went for it all.
Appears it may be all for naught.
It hasn’t been struck down yet. Perhaps Pelosi and Obama will “Deem” it constitutional.