NBC’s Pete Williams: Health care law ‘in trouble’

>> inside for day two of the oral arguments . give a roundup of what happened in the last two hours.

>> reporter: i'll do my best. but let me begin at what i think is the relevant point here, which is, it would seem, and it's always very risky to try to predict what the court's going to do based on oral argument , but nonetheless, it would seem at this point in the process that i think it's very doubtful that the court is going to find the health care law constitutional. i don't see five votes to find that the law constitutional. here's why i say that. number one, i think we were looking at justice scalia , for example, who in past has been willing to find very broad power for congress. he had nothing 0 good to say about this law and no lifelines to the lawyer for the government who was arguing to uphold this. secondly, justice kennedy who can often be the swing vote here, seemed to have grave concerns about it. he said at one point early on in the argument, this is beyond anything congress has ever done before, as he said to the government lawyer you, have a heavy responsibility to justify it. and it didn't seem, during the two hours that justice kennedy found the justification that he needed. now, here is where i think the disagreement comes. there's this very fundamental disagreement that the defenders of the law say they're not really -- they're not bringing people in to regulate them because everyone is in the health care market already. i don't think that satisfied the conservative members of the court. here's an odd point, both side agree you could require people to buy insurance when they show up at the doctor's office or when they show up at the emergency room to get care. they both agree on that. they both said the government could do that because if you're seeking to get health care services , the congress can regulate how you pay for it. what the democrats say what the defenders of the law say, that is well, all we're doing is shifting the time. we're still saying, you have to buy insurance, we're just say you have to buy it earlier. that's where the split is. that's where the conservatives on the court think that that's different, that at that point you're not participating in the health care market so you're forcing people to enter into the stream of commerce and buy something. that's seems to me where the distinction is. it's risky to predict if i had to predict today i would say that the law's in trouble.