The Boston Globe previews Mitt Romney’s message after tomorrow’s Supreme Court ruling on President Obama’s health care plan:

“If the law is rejected, Romney plans to argue that Obama wasted both his time, and the time of the American people, by pursuing a policy that doesn’t pass constitutional muster. If the law is upheld, Romney would argue that opponents need to elect him so that he can overturn it himself.”

Wonk Wire rounds up some interesting theories.

Sarah Palin “is resurrecting the idea that President Obama’s health care law includes what she calls death panels,” USA Today reports.

Wrote Palin on Facebook: “Though I was called a liar for calling it like it is, many of these accusers finally saw that Obamacare did in fact create a panel of faceless bureaucrats who have the power to make life and death decisions about health care funding.”

A new AP/GfK poll finds that just a third of Americans back President Obama’s health care law on which the Supreme Court is about to pass judgment, but more than three quarters want Congress and the president to begin work on a new bill if the court strikes down the 2-year-old law.

Daily Beast: “Clinton predicted that if the law is declared unconstitutional,
Republicans will suffer a backlash when millions of Americans calculate
what they have lost. Before the Affordable Care Act passed, two thirds
of all the applications for bankruptcy were because of health-care
emergencies, a consequence likely to return if health care inflation
again rises precipitously.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s health care law will be released on Thursday.

It’s expected that Chief Justice John Roberts will write the opinion.
Sarah Kliff notes court watchers “expect that Chief Justice John Roberts will author the opinion, after seeing Justice Anthony Kennedy write the opinion in the Arizona immigration case. The justices tend to split up the workload each term, especially when it comes to high-profile and complicated rulings.”

It’s a big day (or week) over at Wonk Wire as we wait for the Supreme Court ruling on President Obama’s health care law.

Start off with a crash course on what they’re deciding and look at what the White House plans to do and what Congress must do if the law is overturned.

First Read: “Don’t forget: We’ll also get the court’s decision on Arizona’s
immigration law this week. By the way, if you are a Republican
strategist involved in a competitive election, you are hoping the
Arizona decision gets released WITH health care. If it’s immigration
today and health care on Thursday, then the GOP has to deal with another
three days of the immigration issue in the news, and we’ve yet to see
how any day that has immigration in the news is a good one for
Republicans in November.”

Update: Wonk Wire has a rundown of all of the court’s decisions.

The New York Times reports the Supreme Court’s decision on President Obama’s health care law may not come on Monday as many have assumed.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds most Americans oppose President Obama’s healthcare law, 56% to 44%, even though they strongly support most of its provisions.

“A glaring exception to the popular provisions is the ‘individual mandate,’ which forces all U.S. residents to own health insurance. Sixty-one percent of Americans are against the mandate, the issue at the center of the Republicans’ contention that the law is unconstitutional, while 39% favor it.”

Said pollster Chris Jackson: “That’s really the thing that has come to define the (reform) and is the thing that could potentially allow the Supreme Court to dismantle it if they decide it’s not constitutional.”

Washington Post: “Some prominent legal scholars say a series of tactical decisions by President Obama’s legal team may have hurt the chances of saving his landmark health-care legislation from being gutted by Supreme Court conservatives.”

“The warnings are a preview of the finger-pointing certain to ensue if the law is overturned. That could come sometime this week, when the justices are expected to decide on the constitutionality of the health-care law and its centerpiece provision mandating that all Americans purchase insurance or pay a penalty.”

The Daily Beast says Supreme Court justices might have tipped off in a decision last week how they will rule on President Obama’s health care plan.

President Obama and the White House “have put on brave faces,” the New York Times reports, insisting that their health care law “and the mandate at its center will be upheld when the court rules this month. In private conversations, they predict that the bulk of the law will survive even if the mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance does not.”

“But even if the White House is a fortress of message discipline, it cannot disguise the potential heartbreak for Mr. Obama, who managed to achieve a decades-old Democratic dream despite long odds and at steep cost.”

“In grappling with what the court may do, Mr. Obama and his advisers now appear to be far past the denial stage (when they dismissed constitutional challenges) but nowhere near acceptance (they still believe the law will be upheld.) Instead, they have quietly entered a surprising new state that might be called Learning to Live Without Universal Coverage.”

For more on what the White House might do, see the latest on Wonk Wire.

A new Bloomberg poll finds a plurality of Americans, 43%, say they want to retain President Obama’s health care law with only small modifications, while 15% say the measure should be left alone and 33% say it should be repealed.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the next week “on the constitutionality of the law, the centerpiece of which is the mandate that most Americans buy insurance or pay a fine.”

Chris Moody: “A new insider survey of 58 legal experts conducted after the oral arguments concluded found that most predict 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. The same expert survey was conducted before the hearings began, which found the opposite: Most thought the law would be upheld.”

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told New York magazine he urged President Obama not to press for health care reform in 2010 after Democrats lost their 60-seat majority.

Said Frank: “I think we paid a terrible price for healthcare. I would not have pushed it as hard. As a matter of fact, after Scott Brown won, I suggested going back. I would have started with financial reform, but certainly not healthcare.”

Frank said Obama made the same mistake Bill Clinton did in 1993 by underestimating the concerns of people who already had healthcare coverage.

President Obama’s re-election campaign puts out a video to mark the 6th anniversary of Mitt Romney’s health care reform in Massachusetts.

[Read more…]

The RNC released a brutal new ad attacking Obamacare using audio clips from the Supreme Court.

Update: Bloomberg reports the ad “uses altered audio.”

[Read more…]

“I can tell you one thing. If I’m the godfather of this thing, then it gives me the right to kill it.”

— Mitt Romney, in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, on President Obama’s health care law.