When the latest Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act met its well-deserved end recently, President Donald Trump reacted in his usual way: with blame, bluster, confusion and promises to mete out pain to parties both related and unrelated to the legislative fiasco the GOP had created. On Tuesday, we got some real numbers about what one of threats Trump made on the internet would mean here in the real world were he to actually follow through.

Though it didn't earn the most headlines, Trump's most deplorable reaction after repeal failed was the contention that he might allow Obamacare to, in his word, "implode" as some sort of national punishment for the Republican letdown. But the president isn't only interested in passive neglect (and reports that Obamacare is set to die on its own are greatly exaggerated anyway). No, Trump followed up with threats to actively sabotage the current law if he doesn't get his way.

"If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!" Trump said on Twitter the day after three Republicans joined with all the Democrats in the Senate to vote down a last-gasp (and utterly ridiculous) health care bill.

That may not sound like much, but, as new data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation showed, what is implied in Trump's tweet would have seriously adverse effects.

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To back up, what Trump is referring to when he talks about "bailouts for insurance companies" are actually payments made to insurers that help lower out-of-pocket costs and deductibles for low-income people who purchase insurance on one of the exchanges set up under Obamacare. These are people who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to comfortably purchase coverage on the exchange; the payments are meant to bridge the gap so that private insurance becomes a feasible option for them.

All told, these "cost-sharing reduction" payments totaled some $7 billion last year, which translates into about $1,000 for each person they helped. Those are the payments Trump and other members of his team have threatened to simply stop.

Per the CBO/Joint Tax Committee joint analysis, doing so would result in a premium increase of some 20 percent next year, going up to 25 percent in 2020, which is not surprising, as insurers would want to fill the gap left by the cessation of payments. Meanwhile, the government would spend about $6 billion more than it would under current law in 2018, because those who used to be aided by the payments would apply for more federal tax subsidies, in order to cover the cost of those higher premiums (and some of them would wind up paying higher prices anyway).

Next year, 1 million more people would wind up uninsured than would under current law, mostly on account of insurers abandoning more areas, and a larger percentage of the country will find itself living in a place with no insurers in the marketplace whatsoever.

In the out years things get more fuzzy, and the number of uninsured may even go down eventually thanks to the increase in amount of tax subsidies being provided to cover higher premiums. But the upshot of the report is that a sudden halt in cost-sharing payments would cause a few years of turmoil, needlessly and senselessly. As the analysis said, "Implementation of the policy through legislation, as opposed to executive or judicial action, would provide greater certainty about how the ACA would be carried out in the short term. Executive or judicial action could very well be challenged in lawsuits that would take some time to resolve – potentially extending the number of years insurers might not participate in the marketplaces."

The Congressional Budget Office and Joint Tax Committee aren't the only organizations to trod on this ground. The Kaiser Family Foundation has also found that stopping these payments would increase premiums by up to 21 percent, and that the government would end up spending billions of dollars more on health insurance anyway.

Republicans under the Obama administration actually tried to play a similar game with these payments, suing the then-secretary of health and human services under the theory that the cost-sharing funds were unauthorized and unconstitutional. But since the Trump administration came in, that case has been in limbo, as Republicans understandably don't want to be blamed for the pain of increased health insurance premiums now that their guy is in the White House; some are explicitly calling for the payments to be continued, by Congress if not the president, proving the cynical nature of the whole exercise.

But that pales in comparison to what Trump is saying he'll pull. To be clear, what we're talking about here, per the numbers, is the president saying he's open to upping the amount of insurance market chaos simply because he's upset about not getting a win in Congress that he can then toot and tweet about.

Quite a few of those who would be hardest hit are almost certainly Trump's most fervent supporters, too; he's threatening to possibly injure them financially in the service of GOP legislation that would hurt them even more, because he actually evinces no respect or concern for those who most deeply support him.

It's all totally despicable – and given the way in which Trump's previous attempts to shake down members of Congress have gone, will be totally ineffective in getting him what he wants.