How an Adverse Supreme Court Ruling Would Send Obamacare Into a Tailspin - NYTimes.com

"Even if you don’t receive Obamacare subsidies, you could still be harmed by the Supreme Court case that could take them away.

A court ruling for the plaintiffs in the case, King v. Burwell, would have wide-reaching effects for the individual insurance markets in around three dozen states. The approximately six million people currently receiving subsidies in those states would be hit hard, of course. But so could the millions who now buy their own insurance without subsidies. The results could be surging prices and reduced choice for health insurance shoppers across the income spectrum.

It’s a phenomenon some health policy experts call the “death spiral,” the result of an insurance pool getting smaller and sicker as more healthy people leave an increasingly expensive health insurance market."