...taking up the question about whether Obamacare enrollees in the Federal exchange should be given subsidies.
Nobody, nobody ever envisioned that states would refuse to set up exchanges when the legislation was drafted.
This option basically only became viable because of the first Supreme Court decision which made it possible for states to decouple the Medicaid expansion to Medicare in general.
Prior to that decision, it would have been basically unthinkable for a state to refuse to implement the ACA, because doing so would have been so obviously inhumane as to cause even the most fervent Republican to consider the risk to be greater than the reward. The first formerly-Medicaid-covered child who died of a treatable disease would have scuttled even the most wild-eyed wanna-be Republican presidential candidate's prospects (and, yes, I am thinking "Rick Perry" here).
So this isn't a problem that was caused by the legislative intent of the original drafting of the ACA, it was caused by the kooky Supreme Court decision #1.
Why are we hearing so little about this on the news? I was basically screaming at my radio as I drove home today, while commentators discussing the genesis of this Supreme Court case ignored the obvious:
This is the Supreme Court reductio ad absurdum..."fixing" a problem that it's own sorry ass caused