Obamacare's Achilles' Heel

"Insurance exchanges constitute the key to success or failure of the law," writes David Catron, adding "states have an opportunity to shoot a poison arrow directly into Obamacare's Achilles' heel."

• Obamacare can't work with insurance exchanges — i.e., new bureaucracies whose ostensible purpose will be to provide "marketplaces" in which people with no employer-based health insurance can shop for coverage at competitive rates.
• The law assumes states will create insurance exchanges, but it doesn't actually require them to do so.
• States have no rational incentive to create exchanges, since exchanges will cost states from $10 million to $100 million per year to operate.
• The Feds can set up an insurance exchange, but then it would bear the operational costs, which it can't afford. Worse, state-based exchanges may distribute credits and subsidies, but a federal exchange may not. That's a huge problem for Obamacare zealots.

There's one more twist in the law. Not creating an insurance exchange protects a state's businesses from job-killing penalties: