Republican governors are holding a boycott. As the deadline looms large for them to establish state-based exchanges, they are refusing to do so, one after the other.

I applaud them. No, really. I do.

For those of you who might have followed the entire Obamacare battle from July, 2009 to March, 2010 -- start to finish -- you may recall that the House bill originally called for a national insurance exchange based on national risk pools rather than smaller, state-based ones. This was always a good thing, because the broader the risk, the less cost each individual has to bear.

Then Max Baucus wasted all sorts of time and energy concern trolling over the possibility that states would sue the federal government for pre-emption of states' rights, and so the Senate version was born with state-based exchanges.

I always hated that idea, because it limited risk to a much smaller pool and had the potential to drive up the costs, but the counterargument was that it was good-faith evidence that the legislative intent was not to override states' decisions.