I’m glad I actually have a degree in health policy, because these people are really out here trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. 1. ACA subsidies do NOT go “to insurance companies” as profit. They’re pass-through payments on behalf of consumers to reduce: •premiums (APTC) •deductibles & co-pays (CSR) If you remove the subsidies, insurers don’t suddenly “get” $26 billion. Consumers lose the discount. Full stop. This is like saying: “Let’s stop giving Pell Grants to universities and give the money to students.” Pell Grants already are money for students, they simply pass through the university’s billing system. Same logic. Same mechanism. 2. Giving $26B “directly to consumers” requires a parallel system that doesn’t exist. Healthcare isn’t groceries. You cannot walk into a cardiologist’s office and “negotiate” open-heart surgery like you’re haggling over avocados. You cannot “shop for”: •hospital admission •chemotherapy •emergency care •insulin •ICU beds •specialized physicians These are regulated services with fixed networks, fixed prices, fixed billing systems, and fixed contracting rules. Cassidy is selling people a fantasy, a free-market fever dream where individual consumers can out-negotiate hospital monopolies, Big Pharma, and vertically integrated healthcare giants. They can’t. Nobody can. Not even Fortune 500 companies get that level of leverage. So either Cassidy doesn’t understand how healthcare works… Or he thinks you don’t. Either way, this “give it directly to the people” pitch is nothing but repackaged misinformation designed to gut the ACA and blame the fallout on consumers. And they hope you’re too distracted to notice.