What happens if HCR individual mandate found unconstitutional?

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Is the new requirement that people buy health insurance unconstitutional?

That’s the principal question before the Supreme Court this week as it takes up the 2010 health care reform law.

The Affordable Care Act is meant to help more people get affordable health insurance coverage — including the 49 million uninsured today — and bring health costs under control. But those goals could be harder to achieve if the court strikes down the “individual mandate.”

Just how much harder is not certain.

The individual mandate is intended to work in conjunction with two other new rules in the law: Insurers must offer everyone coverage regardless of health status, and insurers may not charge people with pre-existing conditions more than other policyholders in their geographic area who have the same plan.

The argument goes like this: The mandate, which wouldn’t start until 2014, would mean the vast majority of Americans will be insured, and that would reduce the costs imposed by the uninsured on everyone else.