The phrase "red states" could get a whole new meaning if Obamacare is repealed.

A new map starkly highlights the U.S. counties that are most at risk of ending up with zero insurers selling Obamacare individual health plans next year if Congress guts the law but suspends the effect of that repeal for some time.

That map's biggest concentration of high-risk counties, marked in red, is in the southern United States. That region heavily supported Obamacare foe Donald Trump in his successful campaign for president last fall.

But the entire states of Wyoming and Alaska, as well as large parts of Oklahoma, Missouri, Nevada, Utah and Arizona, also are at high risk of ending up with no Obamacare insurers, according to The Century Foundation, the progressive think tank that produced the map.All of those states, except for Nevada, gave their electoral votes to Trump.

The "red" counties at high risk contain a total of 10 percent of the U.S. population.





The Century Foundation's analysis and map, is based on a Congressional Budget Office report released last month.

That report analyzed the potential impact of a so-called repeal-and-delay bill that was passed by the Republican Congress last year but vetoed by President Barack Obama. The bill was sponsored Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., who is Trump's pick to run the Health and Human Services Department.

It would would dismantle certain key elements of the Affordable Care Act, but delay their actual removal.

The bill, which has been viewed as a template for possible repeal and replacement of Obamacare this year, would result in "roughly 10 percent of the population ... living in an area that had no insurer participating" in the first year after the bill became law, according to the CBO report.

There is no county currently in the U.S. that has zero insurers offering Obamacare plans.