$1,500 to Watch Healthcare Collapse

Republicans are paying you to abandon comprehensive coverage while the insurance market enters a death spiral.

They’re calling it a gift. Fifteen hundred dollars, deposited directly into an account with your name on it. The Republican proposal sounds generous until you read past the headline.

A 55-year-old woman with diabetes currently pays less than $500 in deductibles. She can afford her insulin, sees her doctor regularly, manages her condition.

Under this new plan, the Health Care Freedom for Patients Act, she gets the $1,500 deposit. She also gets a $7,500 deductible.

The money vanishes the first time she needs actual care. Then she’s alone with a $6,000 gap, choosing between medication and groceries.

This is the trade. Cash for catastrophe.

Senator Cassidy frames it as liberation. Patients get the power instead of insurance companies. But power without protection is just exposure.

The healthy 25-year-old who never gets sick? He wins. Pockets the deposit, pays for his annual checkup, banks the rest tax-free. The grandmother with heart disease? She loses everything.

To get the deposit, you must enroll in Bronze or Catastrophic health plans. These are the bare-bones options with low premiums and sky-high out-of-pocket costs. They cover almost nothing until you’re already financially ruined.

The proposal removes age restrictions on catastrophic coverage, letting insurers sell these plans to older adults who will inevitably need expensive care.

A 60-year-old earning $30,000 currently pays around $50 monthly for a Silver plan. Enhanced subsidies cap premiums at a percentage of income.

Under Cassidy-Crapo, those subsidies disappear. Same person, same income, now paying $400 monthly for a Bronze plan. That’s $350 more every month, plus the massive deductible increase.

The $1,500 doesn’t cover two months of the premium spike, let alone the medical bills.

Four million people could lose coverage entirely. Not by choice. Because they can’t afford what remains after the so-called gift.

Here’s what happens next. Healthy people flee to cheap Bronze plans to grab their cash. Sick people can’t risk the deductibles, so they stay in Silver and Gold plans.

But now those risk pools contain only expensive patients. Insurers raise premiums to cover costs. More people drop out. Premiums climb again.

The system enters a death spiral. Comprehensive insurance becomes unaffordable or vanishes completely.

Children receive nothing under this proposal. A family of four gets $2,000 total while two single adults get the same amount. The deposit evaporates on contact with reality.

The bill ends what’s called silver loading, a quirk in the current system that lets people use inflated subsidies to buy cheaper plans. Fixing this might sound reasonable until you realize it slashes subsidy values across the board.

When the benchmark Silver premium drops, so does everyone’s tax credit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this change alone could strip coverage from 300,000 people.

Enhanced subsidies expire December 31, 2025. Without extension or replacement, premiums double overnight for millions.

The Republican answer is this: a small deposit and a massive trap. The catch isn’t hidden. It is the structure.

$1,500 for $7,500 in exposure.

President-elect Trump and Senate Republicans are betting people won’t read past the headline. They’re betting desperation looks enough like consent.

They’re betting that by the time people understand what they’ve traded away, it’ll be too late to go back.