After an executive order on health care earlier in the day, Donald Trump announced later Thursday that he would scrap federal subsidies to insurance companies to help pay the cost of coverage for low-income people.

The state of New York has already said it would sue.  Together, Trump’s plans could have damaging impact in Arkansas for people in the private insurance market.

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The New York Times notes:

Without the subsidies, insurance markets could quickly unravel. Insurers have said they will need much higher premiums and may pull out of the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act if the subsidies were cut off. Known as cost-sharing reduction payments, the subsidies were expected to total $9 billion in the coming year and nearly $100 billion in the coming decade.

“The government cannot lawfully make the cost-sharing reduction payments,” the White House said in a statement.

It concluded that “Congress needs to repeal and replace the disastrous Obamacare law and provide real relief to the American people.”

Jonathan Chait explains in New York how the Trump strategy will increase health insurance rates and otherwise destabilize the marketplace. The Congressional Budget Office says the end of subsidies will increase insurance premiums by 20 percent by 2018 and 25 percent by 2020. Deficit rises.

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The earlier executive order continues to raise pressing questions, as Vox notes here.

And Politico notes that the end of subsidies was put out under cover of darkness, shortly before 10 p.m. Eastern.

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