To be sure, the reaction to the decision was mixed, with some saying that the decision, good or bad, at least will allow companies to plan for the future.
"As flawed as it is, it still has taken us some way along the path to reduce some uncertainty," said James Paulsen, chief market strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis. "To throw it all out would have put us back to square one and, net-net, a loss for the country."
Paulsen added that he was glad that what essentially was a political decision did not get overturned at the judicial level.
The political considerations are no small part of what happens going forward. Not only will the fate of the law under a Romney administration hang in the balance, but there also remain a number of questions with how the mandate will be implemented.
"The level of uncertainty about the outlook and ultimate cost to business of the health-care reform bill remains somewhat," said David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities in New York. "It kind of leaves us where we were."
- How Key Health-Care Stocks Are Doing
Among the questions Resler pointed out will be how the Internal Revenue Service collects the new tax, and how reporting will take place. He compared it to the Dodd-Frank banking reform law, which still has many provisions that are being negotiated.
"Most of the scheduled implementation for that has not been met, and it's not clear that the provisions under the health-care law will be met as originally envisioned in the law," Resler said. "There's still some uncertainty, but businesses have some clarity about the rules of the road, so to speak, going forward."
The stock marketreacted negatively to the decision, sending major averages and health-care stocks in particular down about 1 percent or more across the board, though the market could be more inclined to move onto other concerns in future days.
"Stocks themselves are just going to pretty much crash because of what's happening with Europe and because of the fiscal cliff in the U.S.," said Lee Markowitz, partner at Continental Capital Advisors in New York. "The broader issues are so much bigger than some increase in spending related to health care."