Unhealthy obsession

America’s middle class will remember Donald Trump as the saboteur who set health care plans under the Affordable Care Act on a surefire path to destruction and sent them the bill. See him smash. Watch it crash. Hear him roar: “The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding,” came the Friday 5:36 a.m. tweet. On further reflection after sunrise: “Obamacare is a broken mess.”

It’s a mess he just made, by following through on threats to yank federal subsidies, known as cost sharing reductions, that until now enabled insurers to offer plans with modest copays — this executive action petulantly taken because he could not con Congress into outright Obamacare repeal.

He opportunistically sides with members of Congress who claim that the payments are illegal, in a case yet to be resolved. (New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and counterparts, arguing the contrary, just filed their own papers demanding an emergency injunction.)

Trump might feel better after this tantrum, but the 6.4 million consumers reliant on insurance purchased on the exchanges this year ought to feel sick, as should every American taxpayer.

Insurers will have no choice but to increase their premiums, by what the Congressional Budget Office projects will be an imminent 20%. The brunt of those higher costs will be borne by the federal government, since Congress in passing Obamacare committed to subsidizing most premiums.

Cost all in, forecasts the CBO: $194 billion through 2026.

Equally alarming is the possibility that healthy participants will flee the exchanges, which Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services has done its darndest to encourage despite the dire consequences of leaving only sicker and therefore costlier patients remaining in the insurance plans. Which will drive costs still higher. Trump has already shortened next year’s enrollment period, eliminated advertising and, not kidding, scheduled healthcare.gov for lengthy “maintenance” shut-downs on Sundays.

The Internal Revenue Service says it’s stopped even checking whether tax filers are complying with Obamacare’s mandate they prove coverage or pay a penalty — giving healthy people every incentive to bail.

In an extra kick likely to dislodge the healthy and further burden Obamacare exchanges under the costs of caring for the ill, Trump also this week signed an executive order enabling insurers to sell bare-bones plans across state lines.

New Yorkers will bear a special burden because an end to the cost-sharing likely means an end to Gov. Cuomo’s Essential Plan, which covers nearly 700,000 people, and where premiums top off at just $20 a month.

And insurers seeking to keep footing atop this earthquake? They warn that consumers will get less care at higher costs.

If you weren’t already feeling sick, that ought to do it.