The one thing Freedom-Hater-care's architects forgot

They forgot the very first law of economics: The money has to come from somewhere.

There's no real new news in Sally Pipes's IBD column today, but she does consolidate a number of bad results from FHer-care that are already manifesting themselves:

For a full year, individuals have had to deal with canceled plans, premium shocks, higher deductibles and narrow networks of health care providers — all thanks to ObamaCare.

Forty-six percent of Americans now describe health costs as a "hardship," up from 36% in 2013.

Those who purchased coverage through ObamaCare's exchanges will get a lot more ornery come tax time this spring. They'll have to fill out a new and extraordinarily complicated form — the instruction booklet runs 21 pages — that directs them to do things like "add allocated amounts across all allocated policies with amounts for non-allocated policies from Forms 1095-A, if any, to compute a combined total for each month."

After enduring this nightmare, about 3.4 million people — roughly half of those who received government subsidies to purchase insurance in the exchanges last year — will have to pay back part of those subsidies because they misreported their incomes, according to tax preparer H&R Block.

Business owners have grown disgruntled, too. Forty-two percent of small businesses report that they've experienced double-digit increases in the cost of health care in the past year. As a result, 37% have delayed investment; 26% have frozen or cut wages.

King v. Burwell may be the pin in the grenade for this grim set of circumstances:

 The plaintiffs in King argue that ObamaCare forbids the federal government from providing subsidies through the federal HealthCare.gov exchange.

The law's text clearly states that financial assistance from the government can only come through exchanges "established by the State."
If the court sides with the plaintiffs, about 4 million people would lose subsidies. Their premiums would suddenly become unaffordable. They'd likely choose to remain uninsured and pay the individual mandate penalty. That could destabilize the insurance marketplace.
Individuals with chronic conditions would likely be the only ones to comply with the individual mandate. Insurers may respond to the loss of millions in subsidized premiums and a sicker population by raising rates for everyone else.
As the exchanges crumbled, the White House would be powerless to intervene. States that had previously used HealthCare.gov would have to set up exchanges themselves. But that's highly unlikely.

And then she lays out the road back to normal-people health care:

State-level high-risk pools, for example, could provide targeted help to those with pre-existing conditions who otherwise cannot afford insurance. States could administer these pools, and the federal government could fund them until a properly functioning, competitive health care system was up and running.
ObamaCare purported to cover the uninsurable by simply decreeing as much — and forcing everyone to pay more for insurance in the process.
By segregating high-cost patients from the rest of the insurance pool, high-risk pools can ensure that premiums remain affordable for the vast majority of the population. Congress should also reform the tax code to allow individuals to purchase health insurance with pre-tax dollars, just like businesses can.
To ensure that low- and middle-income folks could take full advantage, lawmakers could make the credit refundable. Such a move would instantly make health insurance more affordable and level the playing field for all.

That process is not going to be silky-smooth.  It will involve some upheaval.  And the damn shame is that it had to happen because the jackbooted Freedom-Haters just had to go messing with a situation in which 85 percent of Americans with health insurance were satisfied with their coverage.