[Pollster1]

Here's one telling bit: In evaluating the versions of the bill being voted on in the House and Senate, the Congressional Budget Office -- Congress' definitive financial scorekeeper -- never once suggested that subsidy costs would depend on the number of states setting up their own exchanges. If that had been a real possibility for reducing the cost of the bill, Democrats (who were eager to minimize the measure's cost) would certainly have pushed the CBO to tote up the potential savings.

This is clearly and intentionally false. CBO scored ObamaCare with exchanges in all 50 states because they thought the Medicare mandate (found unconstitutional) would force exchanges in all 50 states. The clear democrat intent was to use massive financial sledgehammers to force state participation, and the state-exchange-only subsidies were one of those sledgehammers.

[randita]

States HAD to be assumed to play a huge role in the cost of Obamacare. If the law didn’t take that into account, the fed cost would be astronomical and a few Rats would probably have balked at voting for it.

The fact that we are a republic and states can’t be totally dictated to is one big nail in the coffin of Obamacare.