Article VI, Section 2, aka the Supremacy Clause:
:dubious:
Their existence is not optional. The only choice the Feds allowed the states to have, indulging the feelings of the states’-righters whose views have been obsolete since the Nullification Crisis but continue to be influential nonetheless, was to delegate the task back to the feds if they wished.
IOW, you’re wrong yet again.
No, he’s not. The case law pretty clearly establishes that the federal government can’t force states to help impose a regulatory framework. It can offer them a carrot, or impose it directly, but it can’t do that.
It wasn’t “indulging”. It was because the Feds, by law, were not allowed to require the states to establish the exchanges.
[Quote=Steve Benen]
Maybe it’s worth pausing to remind Republicans what the word referendum means: “an event in which the people of a county, state, etc., vote for or against a law that deals with a specific issue.” I don’t mean to sound picky, but folks shouldn’t call a race a referendum, lose, and then say the referendum proves how right they were – at least if they want to be taken seriously.
[/quote]
From the Maddow Blog:
If we assume that Republican + Libertarian voters voted against the law, then it was a referendum against. McAuliffe won a plurality, not a majority of the votes.
We could also assume that all McAuliffe voters were also against the law, and just voted incorrectly out of stupidity.
So 100% of the VA voters were against the ACA! Truly a stunning turnabout.
Why would we assume that?
They are proposing that the VA governor’s vote was a referendum, by party, on Obamacare. There were 3 parties involved, not 2.
If they want to end their little spat about this and say that party voting doesn’t say anything about Obamacare, then that’s fine. But if they insist on saying the elections was a referendum, then they need to explain all the votes, not just he major party votes.
The same reason you assumed that all the Democratic votes were a vote for Obamacare.
Uh, John Mace, that was a quote from me.
I suspect that if you were paying attention, rather than just insinuating yourself into a discussion youappear ignorant of, you would catch on to the fact that I was not the one who initiated the idea of the VA vote being a referendum. That was adaher. I was simply happy to take him up on it.
Magellan01 had the good sense to try to short circuit the whole thing, recognizing no doubt the stupidity of calling a vote on the governor’s race in VA a referendum on ACA, especially when the cooch was destined to lose.
What I didn’t realize was that adaher was just parroting cooch himself, who was characterizing the race as a referendum on ACA.
So, I don’t personally think it was a referendum. I am quite happy though to make sure everyone gets a good look at someone in the act of being hoist on his own petard. The bottom line is don’t call something a referendum on something and then change your mind when it doesn’t go your way.
A lesser takeaway is to figure out what’s going on when you try to inject yourself into others’ dialogue.
In looking at Robert Sarvis’ comments on Obamacare, I don’t see where he made it a centerpiece of his campaign or even discussed it at all. He seems to have focused on his own ideas (catastrophic coverage and market-based reforms).
Apparently I am not alone in having a good plan canceled because of Obamacare, with Obamacare exchange plans being much worse and more expensive:
What’s annoying (to me) is that these people were (and still are) all pro-Obamacare, but want “help”. “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the man behind that tree.”.
Oh, I’m following that discussion just fine, thank-you-very-much. He never said that we could tell what people think of Obamacare by who won the race-- that was your interpretation (he just said that the race was narrowing). So you decided to run with that, and I’m correcting you. If you want to backtrack, feel free to do so.
There was no petard to be hoisted upon, except the one that you made up.
In this case, keeping you honest. You’re welcome! 
Even *you *didn’t. There are many people like you who’ve had plans (good or not) cancelled with Obamacare used as a pretext, though.
Of course. I had my plan for years. So did the people in the article. Yet suddenly the company just wants to cancel it using Obamacare as a pretext. Can you explain why they didn’t cancel it a year ago? Two years ago? Five?
They didn’t think they could get away with it then. Many aren’t getting away with it now, either.
Have you contacted your state’s AG office about it?
What is there to “get away with”? They could do it any time they wanted.
From the link above
Nope. The only plans on the exchange for my state are worse and/or more expensive than what my son had before.
Because they didn’t have a pretext. What is striking about the article is that Kaiser insists that they are cancelling the plan because it doesn’t meet ACA requirements, yet they fail to say what those specific requirements were, and why the plan couldn’t be adjusted to cover them. Until an insurance company will point to the specifics of the ACA that are requiring them to cancel policies, there is no reason to believe that they are cancelling for any other reason than that they now have a pretext to do so.
Of course the underlying reason is that they’re losing money on you, or expect to pretty soon based on actuarial stats, not that it would cost them a fortune to offer you pregnancy care too.