They probably didn't see this one coming.
Republicans might end up ruing the day they decided to pile onto the
King case before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the federal subsidies people in all of the states that are using the federal health insurance exchange. Turns out, the people who will be most hurt by losing their subsidies are in
the Republican base.
The people who could lose their health insurance as a result of a Supreme Court decision this year are predominantly white, Southern, employed and middle-aged, according to an Urban Institute analysis. […]
The new Urban study finds that the biggest regional loser from the court case would be the South. More than 60 percent of people who would lose their individual health insurance live there. Among different income groups, the largest reductions would come for those earning between 200 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level—or between about $40,000 and $80,000 for a family of three. Forty-seven percent of the people who would lose insurance have full-time jobs, and 34 percent have part-time jobs. Sixty-one percent are white. Forty-seven percent have attended at least some college. Ninety-two percent would probably describe their health as better than fair.
This is a deeper look into the group that would lose insurance if the court strikes down subsidies. RAND Corp.
estimates it will be 9.6 million losing subsidies, and Urban
estimates it's 9.3 million, based on their varied projections for 2015 enrollments. Of those 9.3 million, Urban estimate two-thirds will go uninsured—that's this predominantly white, middle class, Southern group. On top of that, there's about 4.9 million who don't receive the subsidies because of their higher incomes, and Urban estimates that about a quarter of them would become uninsured because they wouldn't be able to afford the 35 percent hike their premiums would take when all those subsidy-receiving people drop out of the market and insurers have to make up for their loss.
It's one thing to withhold or take Medicaid away from millions of poor, disenfranchised people. Republicans aren't going to blink an eye at that. But now they've put themselves in quite a pickle, pushing very hard to strip health insurance away from their most reliable voting base.