The Obama administration seems to believe that the group health insurance market currently “works.” That is why the Affordable Care Act doesn’t change much about the group market. This creates a logical problem for the administration when it tries to argue that the individual mandate for the individual market can’t be severed from the ACA’s main new consumer protections, such as guaranteed issue and community ratings.

As readers of the Angry Bear blog (affectionately known as “AB”) know, I’ve written quite a number of in-depth posts on the ACA litigation—on the individual-mandate provision and on other issues as well. (The number, by my count, is at least 11, including the one I posted Saturday, titled “Showtime at the Supreme Court”). And for your reading enjoyment, and in honor the big show that will be staged at the Court during the next three days, I’m posting the links to all 10** of the earlier posts I located, below.

As the Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments today about the fate of the Affordable Care Act, it is important to keep in mind that the law remains very unpopular. A CBS New/New Times poll shows only about a third of Americans actually support the law, while nearly half the country disapproves of it. How can Justices not be at least indirectly influenced by popular views?

The Democrats’ decision to include an individual mandate to buy private insurance in the Affordable Care Act continues to seriously hurt overall support for the law. The incredible damage to popular support caused by just this one provision is perfectly indicated by these two question in the recent Washington Post ABC News poll.

The Congressional Budget Office looked at the potential impact of companies choosing to drop their employee provide health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act. According to its analysis, if a large number of companies stop providing health insurance benefits it should cause the ACA on net to decrease the deficit even further.

American strongly dislike the individual mandate in the ACA, and the intensity of this opposition has only increased. According to Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll only 32 percent of the country has a favorable opinion of the mandate, while 64 view it unfavorably, and a 54% majority view the mandate very unfavorably. One wonders why Democrats don’t promise to fix this with a less offensive mechanism to achieve the same purpose.

If you believe that non-mandated markets for purchasing private insurance are the true conservative approach for health care, then it’s incoherent to oppose them merely because Romney and Obama agreed with you about exchanges. And it’s unreasonable to believe the Supremes will strike down the exchange provisions even if they don’t like the mandate.

The Affordable Care Act, President Obama signature health care reform law, continues to slowly but steadily become less popular as time goes on. A new Quinnipiac University poll found that 52 percent of voters think Congress should repeal the law, while just 39 percent think Congress should let it stand as is.

A new study by the RAND Corporation found that while simply removing the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act would result in fewer individuals choosing to buy insurance, it would not produce the so-called premium death spiral predicted by some of the mandate’s strongest supporters.

Some Connecticut legislators are seriously looking into creating a Basic Health Plan for people who make between 133 and 200 percent of the federal poverty level, instead of forcing them to use the new private health insurance exchanges.