Merrill Goozner read my article in the March 21 National Review, in which I argue that states should refuse all ObamaCare funds and refuse to erect an ObamaCare Exchange that would execute the law’s many health-insurance regulations. Since ObamaCare provides that the feds will set up and administer an Exchange in states that don’t do so themselves, Goozner concludes that I’m actually advocating a federal takeover of health care. Really?

Goozner either completely missed the point of my article, which I sort of doubt, or he’s trying to be cute. Let’s assume it’s the former.

As I explain in that article, under ObamaCare the feds will write all the rules governing health insurance, so who administers the Exchanges is well-nigh irrelevant. ObamaCare is a federal takeover of health care, no matter who runs these new government bureaucracies that we call health insurance Exchanges.

Then again, there is reason to suspect that Goozner is just trying to be cute. ObamaCare apologists know that if states stop implementing the law, it will be easier for Congress to repeal it or for the Supreme Court to strike it down. They know that if states don’t set up their own Exchanges, HHS may not be able to set them up itself, which would jeopardize the federal government’s ability to start doling out ObamaCare’s hundreds of billions of dollars in new debt-financed entitlement spending in 2014. So it makes sense to attack or ridicule me for suggesting that states should obstruct ObamaCare because he suspects that could bring the whole miserable operation down. But surely Goozner can come up with something more plausible than suggesting that I’m advocating a federal takeover of health care.