When a fellow goes on the Obamacare Exchange to sign up for health insurance he’s asked: Do you qualify for a subsidy? Click here.

515,000 lower-income North Carolinians clicked and qualified but any day now the Supreme Court may decide – in the King vs Burwell case – those subsidies are illegal. And, if it does, those folks are going to have to come up with an average of $315 per month or lose their health insurance.

Now the question isn’t whether those folks will continue to receive healthcare – they will. It’s a cold hard fact we are not going to say to a sick person, If you can’t pay for care, you don’t get it.

Instead, the question is how the rest of us will pay for it?

Will we pay with another subsidy? Or pay hospitals to care for the uninsured in the ER? Or will we pay some other way?

Right now, in Congress Republicans – from Paul Ryan in the House to Ron Johnson in the Senate – are wrestling with bills to restore those subsidies (if the Supreme Court throws them out).

But there’s a question almost no one has raised: Is it fair to ask a person to do something in return for a subsidy?

Of course, the Democrats in Washington won’t be wild about the idea of workfare – they’ve spent years perfecting ways to give people money to win their good-will (and votes) and workfare just gets in their way.

But workfare’s an idea Republicans in Congress ought to lay on the table.