I boiled this down to the following points:
Exchanges are the store through which consumers MUST purchase a health insurance product from the government.
The Fed says that states MUST set up their own exchanges, or it will force a Federal one on them.
The Feds say that state established exchanges will enable states to avoid Federal interference, but in reading the act, there are NINE sections of the ACA (Obamacare) mandating that states must set them up exactly as the Feds would have set them up, with the exception that they can offer more benefits than the Feds if they choose.
The Feds are baiting the trap to entice states to set up their own exchanges in two ways, by allowing up to half of the seats on the governing boards of the state exchanges to be held by insurance or other industry, and by enabling large government subsidies if a state exchange is set up.
The states have to have their exchanges "approved" by the Department of Health and Human Services, but the rules for the exchanges are not final, and can be changed at any time by DHHS.
Section 1311 of the ACA provides for premium subsidies to insurances for state exchanges only, NOT federal exchanges.
If the states do not set up an exchange, the Feds will do it for them. But there is no mechanism to provide taxpayer subsidies to a FEDERAL exchange, and THIS is the Achilles Heel.
Now, as the article points out, the only thing that keeps a federal mechanism for providing the funding to do EXACTLY the same thing is Congress, which could change and pass legislation at any time. And I no longer have any confidence that Congress is any kind of bulwark against anything, and as the article also posits, Obama could simply fund it without legislation. Although it is against the law, that hasn't stopped him in the past.
Obamacare is not SUPPOSED to work.
Some states are giving Obama the finger on Obamacare.
I happen to live in one, my employers have not been given any directions in as such about providing health care insurance, in the 18 years I have worked there they only once offered insurance and even then nobody bought into it.
The Federal apparatus has ceased to even attempt to find a legitimate reason for its actions and existence. It now just manufactures what it can and will do out of thin air.
We the People have a horrible problem on our hands here-
BTTT
BTW..here’s the REAL Achilles heel of this monstrous mess...
Now that the SC declare that this indeed a tax....
“Tax-raising Affordable Care Act started in wrong house of Congress”
And with no differentiators in product, you can bet that the levels of corruption that occur as insurance companies strive to increase market share are going to approach Late Roman Empire levels.