Michael Hiltzik: The Supreme Court Obamacare case centers on technicalities, but much more is at stake

Anyone listening in to the nearly two hours of oral arguments before the Supreme Court over the fate of the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday might have thought that the important issues were abstruse principles of legal standing and statutory severability.

Those may indeed be the principles on which the court will decide whether to declare the entire ACA unconstitutional — as Texas and the other red states bringing the case are asking. But they don't touch on what's at stake.

The task of reminding the court of the real-life ramifications of the case fell to lawyers for California and other blue states defending the law, and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

The plaintiffs' argument "would cause enormous regulatory disruption, upend the market, cast 20 million Americans off health insurance during a pandemic and cost the states tens of billions of dollars