This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 29, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Affordable Care Act has been upheld by the Supreme Court,

but the decision may be less of a victory for the Obama administration

than we thought yesterday.

For example, it's now possible for states to block almost all of the laws spending power.

So says Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies

at the Cato Institute.

A whole lot is being made of the individual mandate

being upheld, not under Commerce Clause grounds, but under taxing power grounds, and there's

a lot that's still unclear about that.

And less is being made of the Medicaid expansion being sort of boxed in or limited.

Can you describe what, how this affects states decision

and what that decision was by the court?

Well, it sort of understates the case to say that the Medicaid expansion was boxed in or

tweaked or something like that. They completely, the Supreme Court completely

defanged this Medicaid expansion.

The way Medicaid works is the federal government pays for

a little more than half of each state's Medicaid program and the state kicks in the other

half.

What the federal government said in Obamacare is, you have to expand your Medicaid program

dramatically and if you don't, then you're going to lose all federal

...