If you work for a small business, the executive order could cause major changes to your plan. The order asks the Labor Department to loosen rules that permit small companies to band together to form associations and buy the kind of coverage available to larger businesses. These association health plans would be governed by federal employment law, not state insurance regulations.

That means that the plans would have far fewer rules about generosity or benefits. State insurance regulators might also have more trouble making sure that the insurers have enough money to pay their members’ medical bills. Such association health plans, before 1983, when rules were looser, were rife with fraud.

Businesses unable or unwilling to join such associations might face higher premiums in the Obamacare market. The kinds of companies that are likely to fare better in an association plan are probably those with relatively healthy employees. That means that businesses that remain in the normal small-business market may end up having sicker and more expensive workers, on average, increasing premiums.

What will this mean for people who buy their own insurance?

The biggest risk to consumers is that insurance companies, faced with the news about the subsidies going away, will drop out of the market for next year. Their contracts allow them an out if subsidy policy changes.

The effects of the executive order are less clear, though there are likely to be some. It appears that a coming rule will expand a kind of short-term insurance plan intended for people who are in between jobs, making those plans available to more consumers who wish to find an insurance option that is cheaper and less comprehensive than those available in the Obamacare marketplaces.

Such plans are currently exempt from most insurance rules. That means the plans can reject or charge higher prices to customers with pre-existing health conditions, can cover fewer benefits and can charge higher deductibles. Because they tend to be skimpier and insure only healthy customers, the plans’ prices tend to be lower. Under current regulation, such plans can last for only three months at a time. The order asks for a change to lengthen their duration, a directive likely to result in plans that last just under a year, the standard before this year. That change would make it easier to use such insurance as a substitute for Obamacare-compliant coverage.

It is possible that the association rule will allow self-employed people to join associations, but legal experts are skeptical that the labor laws will permit it.