[Tzqowwyt]

Can Texans not trade on the NYSE? I fail to see how Texas can stop an exchange from being set up. No TX company is required to list with the NYSE. It's entirely voluntary. These 'exchanges' aren't really 'exchanges'. A better word is transfers. The federal government would require Texas to register everyone in the state with the program, and, the big part, share information with the federal government (health, etc), in order to ensure compliance.

It can't really be done successfully without state compliance. If a state is unwilling to submit proper records, then it's impossible for the federal government to collect that information. What Obama will probably try to do is to do it through the IRS, people who are residents in Texas and pay taxes to the feds there, would likely get hit for compliance. Then it becomes a question, what is Obama willing to do to force people into it? Is he really willing to send federal agents to Texas, to arrest Texans for non-compliance?

It's a bit more complicated than that. First of all, Texas isn't really defying the law, just passing the responsibility for the exchange to the feds. Second, defying this small clause of the law is a long ways from supporting an ammendment (which you seem to be hinting at for reasons that are beyond me... all they need is legislation to overturn it.) In any case, 6 is a long way from 35. Not when it involves the sharing of health information, and the transfer of said information from the state to the feds. 6, including TX have successfully passed a bill cutting off these components, another 26 are along the way. 32 is pretty close to having the states to successfully pass an amendment, and there's nothing Obama can do about that. If the states feel that there's nothing else that can't be done, then this is probably what will happen.

Texans and people in Texas get picked up by Feds and prosecuted in Federal courts all the time. As for spectacles, unless there's some anti-Obamacare cult holed up in a compound the ATF (or the Bureau of Making Uninsured Peoples Pay) sets fire to, it doesn't seem like it would even register. The papers down here will be all over that like flies on ****, if Obama tries to arrest someone for 'not paying his due'.

I'm an opponent of Obamacare in general... but having the Feds set up the exchange instead of doing it yourself doesn't seem to accomplish anything other than perhaps saving some money and giving up some control. It's not intended to do anything more than to protect Texas in the meantime, until more permanent measures can be passed. It's a stop gap. Enough states pass it and it becomes increasingly unlikely that Obamacare will survive in the long run.