The long-awaited Supreme Court process began this week with the Justices taking up three days of oral arguments with potential rulings on multiple pieces of this complex legislation coming as soon as this summer.
Here’s a quick recap of this week’s arguments:

Day One
The Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 stipulates that a new tax cannot be argued before actual revenues have been collected and there is something to then materially dispute. In this case, since the IRS would collect PPACA’s assessed penalties, the first point of order has become whether or not the individual mandate penalty is, in fact, a tax. Secondly, if it is ruled that it is a tax, a decision would have to be made whether the Supreme Court has the right to take up this case before revenues are collected or whether it should wait until 2015, when 2014 penalties have been collected.

Day Two
The single most controversial item of all - the individual mandate. Does the federal government possess the Constitutional right  to require individuals to purchase insurance or pay a fine? From hilarious comparisons of buying broccoli and compulsory cell phone purchase to serious considerations about whether the government has the right to create commerce so they can therefore regulate it, the individual mandate remains the centerpiece of this fight.

Day Three
A Severability Clause is usually included in legislation, though absent in the final version of PPACA, and generally provides that the balance of a law will remain in force in the event that any provision of a statute is declared unconstitutional or illegal. The Supreme Court, if they rule PPACA is not a tax, if they actually take up the full case, and If the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate, it would then have to decide what, if any, parts of the law would remain. Key points in this argument are the congressional intent of the law and also the unintended effects that leaving parts of the legislation without others (not what was intended or fiscally planned for PPACA to work in its current form) would have on the insurance companies, state exchanges, etc.

A separate issue hearing arguments on Day Three focused on another states’ rights point. 26 states have sued the federal government for, among other things, expanding Medicaid requirements under PPACA and the states argue that it amounts to “coercion” by the federal government.

While opinions abound over which way Justices are leaning and where their questioning is headed, remember that actual decisions aren’t expected until June at the earliest. But, all in all, these three days of oral arguments are setting up an electrifying summer and pre-election fireworks. Regardless of personal political views, this is fascinating stuff for sure. We’ll keep you posted with more developments as things progress on both sides of this landmark legislation.