But dealing this damage to Obamacare would come at a cost, and perhaps one higher than Trump and congressional Republicans are willing to pay, even as they prepare to scrap the Affordable Care Act.

...

The damage wouldn’t be limited to only those low-income enrollees. Health insurance companies would be faced with a choice of losing money in an already fragile market or abandoning it. That would extend the effects of cutting off those payments beyond the beneficiaries of these subsidies to other Obamacare enrollees, whose insurance plans would suddenly cease to exist.

Consumers whose insurers exit the market would then need to scramble to find new coverage ― if they could. Depending on the scale of the disruption, there may not be insurers still willing to offer policies on the exchanges, because they all would be subject to the financial losses caused by the lost subsidy payments.

Whatever congressional Republicans and the Trump administration may devise as a health reform platform to succeed Obamacare ― if they ever actually do ― would rely on private health insurance companies. Disruption to today’s insurance market by eliminating the cost-sharing payments could cause financial harm to those companies and make them wary of participating in any future health care reform.

And that’s not to mention any public outcry that may occur if millions of consumers suddenly find themselves uninsured through no fault of their own.