New Survey Indicates that the Supreme Court is Likely to Strike Down Individual Mandate

It is expected that the Supreme Court will soon announce its ruling on the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s health care law passed in 2010. At the latest, the decision will be announced on June 28th, although it could come earlier.

In the meantime, a new survey that was paid for by the American Action Forum has concluded that the court will strike down the so-called individual mandate, a central provision within the law requiring that every American purchase a government-approved form of health insurance.

Using a scale from 0 to 100, the pollsters asked the 58 legal experts (38 former clerks of current Supreme Court justices and 18 attorneys who have argued before the court) to rate the probability that the individual mandate provision would be declared unconstitutional. The insiders provided an average rating of 57 percent, a significant jump from the pre-hearing survey when the average was just 35 percent. Of note, the same expert survey was conducted before the hearings began, and found that most thought the law would be upheld.

The notion that the entire law would be struck down if the individual mandate is declared unconstitutional received an average rating of 31 percent in the new poll, an increase of four percentage points from the pre-hearing survey. The average prediction that the law would remain even if the individual mandate is removed dropped to 21 percent from 36 percent in the new survey.