Rental TV sets with coin slots that required payment to turn on were common in the 70's. This isn't a new model.
My grandparents had a phone which only allowed incoming calls (which my older cousins did a type of phone phreaking on to call out, or at least pretended to!)
That doesn't necessarily mean it's a trivial purchase—far too much of the country (never mind the world) lives in poverty—but it's not something anyone in the US would pay in installments.
The government can give phones away if they want to (and they do), no need to ban other arrangements.
No cost benefit analysis neede? By this logic we would still have endentured servitude and child labour, after all they are just "other arrangements"
A smartphone is required for thousands of essential services, up to the point where EU citizens need one to claim their right to reside in UK after brexit.
I needed it to open a bank account.
During covid you have to leave details in every restaraunt using a smartphone for contact tracing.