Ve Have Vays of Making You Participate ...

... "So [Nichols] says Congress may want to consider another option: Make the states do the hard work. Lawmakers could withhold federal funding in the health law unless states require people to have health insurance. That's how Congress got states to lower speed limits in the 1970s.

"It would have the virtue of avoiding the constitutional debate," he says. But "it would have the downside of enabling states that were not inclined to expand coverage for their populations. They would then have an out, and they would withdraw from the reform." ...

Lawsuits. A court declaring the whole bloody thing unconstitutional. And now shopping a full fledged end-around in an attempt to blackmail the states into compliance. That's an awful lot of arm twisting and hand wringing for something that said states could have essentially cast a vote on once upon a time ...