The Supreme Court will soon rule on whether federal tax subsidies for health insurance are legal in 37 states where state governments are not running their own exchanges. In the King v Burwell case, a court ruling in favor of King will be a huge blow to Obamacare. It will also produce positive and negative results.
If the court rules against the Obama administration, three things will happen: (1) in order to continue with health insurance acquired in an exchange, people will have to pay the full premium out of their own pockets, but (2) the individual mandate will no longer apply unless people can find a plan that costs no more than 8.5 percent of their income and (3) the employer mandate in affected states will no longer apply.
We now have competing estimates on the left and the right about what all this will mean.