Verrilli's 'limiting principles' for the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act

In a post I put up immediately following the March 27 oral arguments in the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the individual mandate, I argued that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli's difficulty articulating a "limiting principle" to the government's right to mandate purchases stemmed in large part from constant interruption by the justices -- and that Verrilli did eventually produce the demanded limiting principle (two, in fact).

Oral argument is a cauldron of conflict -- at least, this one was. What came out of Verrilli in broken syntax and shorthand on March 27 is stated with admirable precision in his reply brief to the plaintiffs' briefs against the constitutionality of the mandate.  Here I'd like to compare the oral and written.

Here's the first principle as stated in oral argument:

JUSTICE ALITO: Before you move on, could you express your limiting principle as succinctly as you possibly can? Congress can force people to purchase a product where the failure to purchase the product has a substantial effect on interstate commerce, if what? If this is part of a larger regulatory scheme?

GENERAL VERRILLI: We've got -

JUSTICEALITO: Is that it?

GENERAL VERRILLI: We've got -

JUSTICE ALITO: Is there anything more?

GENERAL VERRILLI: We got two and they are -- they are different. Let me state them. First, with respect to the comprehensive scheme. When Congress is regulating -- is enacting a comprehensive scheme that it has the authority to enact that the Necessary and Proper Clause gives it the authority to include regulation, including a regulation of this kind, if it is necessary to counteract risks attributable to the scheme itself that people engage in economic activity that would undercut the scheme. It's like -- it's very much like Wickard in that respect. Very much like Raich in that respect ( p. 44).

The mandate "is necessary to counteract risks attributable to the scheme itself that people engage in economic activity that would undercut the scheme" -- that is, obtaining medical care they cannot pay for because they are uninsured. Compare the tighter formulation in the reply brief: