A bill introduced Monday by a Missouri lawmaker appears designed to terrorize insurers into no longer providing insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Should it be enacted, it could potentially impose crippling financial sanctions on any insurer who does sell Obamacare plans in Missouri. The bill closely tracks a proposal by a staffer at a conservative think tank who is heavily involved in efforts to push state lawmakers and the courts to undermine or even rewrite segments of the Affordable Care Act. Though the bill’s key provisions are unlikely to have much effect at all under the Affordable Care Act as drafted, they could potentially impose enormous financial costs on insurers who sold plans in health marketplaces authorized by Obamacare if a Supreme Court case seeking to gut much of the Affordable Care Act succeeds. One of the leading advocates behind that lawsuit is the same think tank staffer who proposed state legislation mirroring this bill. […] The bill closely resembles a 2013 proposal by Michael Cannon, a health policy staffer at the Cato Institute who is also one of the architects of the King litigation. Cannon’s proposal calls for states to enact legislation providing that "if any insurance carrier licensed by the state accepts" subsidized premium payments under the Affordable Care Act, then "the state will partially suspend the insurer's license immediately and until the insurer returns that remuneration to its source and represents that it will decline any such remuneration in the future." In essence, Cannon seeks to cut off the subsidies by forcing insurers to return them to the federal government or else they lose their ability to do business in the state.

In complete contradiction of the Republican ideology of free markets, Republican lawmakers in Missouri want to prevent health insurance companies from competing for customers and giving Missourians the most affordable options for health insurance. You'll be shocked to know where it's coming from.Thecase is the one now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, which would strip subsidies from all of the people who purchased insurance through the federal health insurance exchange. Cannon's Missouri efforts are, for now, meaningless. Federal law preempts state law, so even if it were to pass, it could not be enforced. If, however, the activist Supreme Court majority of five vote to strike down the subsides, "the rewritten federal law would no longer stand as an obstacle to the implementation of Cannon’s policy." Which could mean that insurance companies that collected subsidies after the state law was passed—if it is passed—would have to return them to the federal government.

The possible effect now of all this uncertainty in Missouri—which uses the federal exchange—is to keep insurers out of the market or to cause them to withdraw from it. All of which means Missourians have to pay an awful lot more for insurance, more than many can afford. With one bad bill, Missouri Republicans could cut into insurance company profits (because they'll still be required to take all comers, including the really sick ones) and deprive thousands of people of health insurance. Because they hate President Obama.