Not necessarily. Some bills contain language to the effect that if any part be ruled unconstitutional the other parts shall stand. Don't know about the language in the present bill. Perhaps someone here knows the specifics. The bill is definitely in trouble without the challenged part however.
Many are hoping the court will strike down the individual mandate. I am one of them. We wouldn't be in this spot if our capitalist way of providing medical care hadn't utterly failed. The reasons for the failure can be debated endlessly, but I believe it is because capitalism only works well when there is free competition, i.e., what Ya'll call "free enterprise." Unfortunately, there is no free enterprise, i.e., competitive markets, when it comes to U.S. healthcare. My preference is for the government to use its power of coercion to force those in the health care delivery business to compete, by deregulating, plus many other aggressive measures. But that's unlikely, even though it was the thrust of Obamacare as originally proposed. First the insurance companies were going to be forced to compete with the public option. Once that was in place, follow-on measures would have forced other non-competitive parts of our dysfunctional, inefficient, disastrous healthcare "system" to compete or leave the market to the government. Those who fought tooth and nail to kill the public option and thus, foolishly believed they could indirectly kill Obamacare, may have, let's hope, played right into the hands of those who want a single payer, medicare-like system for everyone. Something unlikely to be struck down by the Court. Not my preferred solution, but far, far better then what our present day non-competitive, government protected, Medical Cartel has offered the millions who do not have reasonable access to a reasonable level of medical care at a price below that of bankruptcy. I am hoping the court will strike down the individual mandate. Even if they don't, this is only round one.
Healthcare is essentially local, so how exactly would "deregulating" create more competition? I'm not going to travel 80 miles for a doctor just because under a less-regulated regime that doctor is a slightly more competitive provider. Yes, you can do some things in pharmacies or in other kinds of walk-in offices that would end up being cheaper than the current system, but vaccinations aren't where the big money is spent anyway, so the overall savings won't be that significant. I actually think the problem is more along the lines of the fact that every Joe Schmoe who walks into a doctor's office expects to be treated with the most up-to-date technology for no cost, somehow believing that's his birthright. If we tiered the quality of care to people's ability to pay (can only pay for 1970's technology? That's what you get), then a lot of the issues would disappear. Also, get rid of Medicare, since all it seems to have accomplished is for the government to spend an enormous amount of money to keep grandma alive for a couple more months. Hey, want your grandma to live to see 1 more birthday? Take the funds to do so out of whatever inheritance she's leaving you and I'll do the same, or not, however I decide. Set up medical savings accounts that are really robust. I can spend my life investing in the various segments of the health care industry and, given their enviable position as a crucial growth industry, I'm sure that those equity investments will leave me with far more funds in my medical savings account than will be in the Medicare "trust fund" when I retire. Yeah, these accounts will have the same issues as IRAs and 401k plans, in that people won't save enough, but once they see enough of their relatives turned away for lack of funds to pay for health care, the idea will get across that it's your own responsibility.
Well, they can show up for their medical treatments with whatever "mindset" they want, but they also better show up with a way to pay for it. The "Liberal/Entitlement" mindset is on a collision course with reality. It will happen at different paces for different people, but eventually it will go the way of the dodo. After decades of governments overpromising and underdelivering, taxpayers are finally remembering that they are the actual bosses. Hey, it took something like 40 years for the last Japanese soldiers to stop holding out on those islands in the Pacific after WWII. Since the Liberal/Entitlement mindset is at least as delusional as the Japanese Shinto mindset, I would expect nothing less than to have to continually fight rear-guard actions against it.
Obama made a huge mistake when he dropped the public option. It's the only way to rein in the USA medical cartel. The medical cartel has our whores in D.C. well under control. It is a shame that this country can dole out money to every tyrant in every corner of the earth, but it refuses to provide care for all its citizens.
Why would you want to "rein in" a group that includes some of the most intelligent and capable people in our society? And put them under the control of semi-morons like the one who inhabit Congress? You people are really odd and backward.
healthcare will never work correctly if the law is you have to treat someone even if they cannot pay. the healthcare business model is always going to be farked up.