WASHINGTON (MCT) — Hours after the Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama’s health-care law Thursday but made its Medicaid expansion optional, a reporter asked senior White House officials how they’d entice states to participate.

They laughed. It seemed almost inconceivable to them that states would opt out. After all, the federal government will be paying the entire bill for three years for the expanded health insurance program for the poor, from 2014 to 2017, and then picking up at least 90 percent of the costs after that.