The long, trudging march of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act toward the U.S. Supreme Court is nearing the end, of the road, as court after court clash over the constitutionality of the landmark legislation.

But there one's small problem. While the individual mandate clearly emerges as the point of judicial contention, someone forgot to tell the courts about the rest of the law. Because, while the law remains a legal and logistical mess, the PPACA without the individual mandate is something altogether worse.

Several states – and some of the courts – have argued rather convincingly that this particular exercise of the Congressional “commerce clause” (the individual mandate) exceeds any historic interpretation of this little-known Constitutional provision. But any underwriter will tell you that compelling carriers to offer coverage to “everyone” without also mandating “everyone” purchase said coverage is as mathematically challenged a conceit as No Child Left Behind – Bush's landmark education law that forced new standards and testing on the states without actually paying for any of it.