The Washington Post reports:

For 14 months, a bipartisan group of 17 states has been quietly collaborating with the Obama administration to help build a foundation for the health-care reform law’s success.

The group includes some of the law’s staunchest supporters working alongside a handful of its bigger detractors. They are backed by $3 million in funding from eight nonprofit organizations that hope to see the Affordable Care Act succeed.

Together, they have come up with a tool to help consumers navigate the health insurance exchanges—the marketplaces that each state is required to have by 2014.

In other words, at the same time Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, and Kansas are suing to overturn Obamacare as unconstitutional, officials in those states are helping to implement the same unconstitutional law.

The Post reports, without rebuttal, several myths about the states’ role under Obamacare. It refers three times to the “tight deadlines” states face under the law. (There are no deadlines. HHS has said that if states decline to create exchanges, they can change their minds later.) It claims, “If a state does not have a framework in place by 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services will come in and do the job itself.” (That’s highly questionable. Obamacare appropriates zero funds for federal exchanges and HHS has admitted it doesn’t have the money.) It quotes Kansas insurance regulator Linda Shepphard as saying, “There is no work being done to build an exchange in Kansas at this point.” (Well, which is it? Is Kansas doing “no work,” or is it “collaborating with the Obama administration”?) I’d say certain state officials got some ’splaining to do.

In the video below the jump, I explain to state officials why flatly refusing to create an Obamacare exchange is the best thing they can do for their states.