[ EDIT: Since the undated article is actually from Feb 2020, predating the expansion of federal health insurance subsidies, I withdraw everything I said below. ]
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The opening story is fabricated and/or bullshit.
Last year (2025) there was no limit on income for health insurance subsidies. That ended for this year, but last year there would have been no reason for anyone who knew what they were doing to try to lose money to drop their income (especially in the cited range of $48-55k/year).
That is the case this year, in most states (thankfully not where I live), but that's not what TFA is talking about.
Suspicious? It certainly makes me skeptical that the author has got the details of the other examples correct.
Goes to show that having a creation date placed somewhere near the top of an article or blog post is a good idea.
The post is from February 2020.
I can't see a date on the post (on mobile) but the archives link has month and year.
Well then, I take it all back.
This might vary state-by-state, CA MediCal for instance did limit the subsidies based on income last year. I don't think it was an all-or-nothing cutoff, but I do think there were points around the 50k mark where the delta between your subsidy and the one for the lower bracket was higher than the loss you'd take by a few thousand dollars.
The subsidies were from the federal government, managed as part of your federal income tax return. They had nothing to do with additional state subsidies.
The basic story was that until the end of 2025, nobody in the USA had any reason to pay more than (roughly) 8.3% of their AGI for health insurance.