It happened on January 12, 2010, during a broadcast of “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross on National Public Radio. At the time, House and Senate leaders were meeting with the White House, in order to forge a compromise bill based on the measures each chamber had already passed. This was before Scott Brown won the special election for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat, depriving Democrats of their filibuster-proof majority and forcing them to pass the Senate bill with only modest, subsequent amendments. One major sticking point was the design of the new insurance exchanges. The House bill envisioned a national exchange. The Senate bill favored state exchanges.

Gross asked me about that issue—and what might happen if, under the Senate version, state officials decided not to do have their own exchanges. “I’ll be honest,” I responded. “This is not something I’ve looked into that closely because I don’t think it’s going to end up in the bill.” I should have stopped right there. Instead, I proceeded to speculate about a mechanism similar to the one that Michael Cannon, Jonathan Adler, and the law’s critics have suggested the Senate was trying to create. My description is a bit muddled and it went on for some time, but I made the point that “I can’t possibly imagine a state opting out of an insurance exchange, given it’s a good deal for the state.”