This King v. Burwell case sure has everyone worked up. So muchso that the math doesn't even add up—but, hey, what are millionsamong taxpayers?

On the same day last month, two separate think tanks droppedstudies on what a subsidy smack down would mean for consumers.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—working with The UrbanInstitute—found that a ruling for King could toss 8.2 million outof the exchanges. In turn, that would jack up average premiums 35percent, according to the Urban researchers.

Bet you didn't hear anything about that, did you? That's becausethe artisans over at the Rand Corp. painted an even darker picture.If you thought RWJ went all Bacon, then the cats at Rand wentstraight Bosch.

Their research suggests as many as 9.6 million PPACAenrollees could find themselves on their collective assesif the subsidy rug gets pulled out from under them. In short, about70 percent of enrollees would be uninsured all over again.

If the justices—in their infinite, impartialwisdom—invalidate the subsidies in the federal exchange,two things will happen.

One, the economy, which is actually picking up somesteam, will no doubt stall out. And, two, Republicans willtake the blame for it—even though they had nothing to do withPPACA's poorly drafted prose. The media will bashthem (like they ever need much of an excuse) for crashing theeconomy while the millions of freshly uninsured will remain bitteruntil the next time they step into a voting booth.

Republicans need to worry less about Keystone (have you seen gasprices lately?) or immigration (alienating thenation's fastest growing voting bloc) and quickly fix this part ofthe law. It will avert a crisis, catch the president off guard andCongress can chalk up an early win going into start of the nextelection cycle. More importantly, though, it will allow the GOP tofinally dictate some common sense funding mechanism for a lawthat's otherwise been supported by so many tooth fairies.

Not convinced? Then consider this: For the sake of argument,let's split the difference between the think tank numbers and say8.9 million will suddenly find themselves without health insurance.Mitt Romney lost the last election by 3.2 million votes.