Nobody knows what the Supreme Court will decide with regard to the Affordable Care Act. But, after this week's hearings, it seems quite possible that the court will strike down the ''mandate'' -- the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance -- and maybe the whole law. Removing the mandate would make the law much less workable, while striking down the whole thing would mean denying health coverage to 30 million or more Americans. Given the stakes, one might have expected all the court's members to be very careful in speaking about both health care realities and legal precedents. In reality, however, the second day of hearings suggested that the justices most hostile to the law don't understand, or choose not to understand, how insurance works. And the third day was, in a way, even worse, as antireform justices appeared to embrace any argument, no matter how flimsy, that they could use to kill reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]