Jan. 13 (UPI) — The end of temporary subsidies for Affordable Care Act health insurance policies is raising rates and causing many to lower their coverage or forgo it as open enrollment nears its end.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services run the HealthCare.gov enrollment site in 30 states and reported about 800,000 fewer signups compared to last year, according to NBC News.
Those states also are seeing fewer new signups and fewer policy renewals than last year.
“People are saying: ‘I just can’t make the math work. I cannot afford this,” Audrey Morse Gasteier, executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, told NBC News.
She said many are gambling that they won’t have any health problems over the next year as the ACA health insurance plan rates rise by an average of 26% and as much as 114% in some states.
Affordability does not appear to be a factor in several other states, though.
Twenty states and the District of Columbia have their own respective ACA health insurance exchanges, and 10 of them said they are seeing record numbers of health insurance enrollees.
Officials in New Mexico, Minnesota and Colorado also are reporting either level or increased numbers of enrollees when compared to 2025.
Yet, in Virginia, Idaho and Massachusetts, the number of people choosing to end their coverage is about double the number from 2025.
The situation is worse in Pennsylvania, where the number dropping their coverage — 70,000 — is three times as much as a year ago and rising.
In Kentucky, New York and California, new enrollees also are down, and many returning policyholders are lowering their coverages to the most affordable policies that also have the highest deductibles.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported 22.8 million have signed up for individual health insurance plans via the health insurance marketplaces since open enrollment started on Nov. 1.
The number includes 15.6 million who bought policies via HealthCare.gov in the 30 states that use it and 7.2 million in the other 20 states and the District of Columbia.
About 2.8 million plans were sold to new enrollees, while the other 20 million are returning policyholders.
The annual ACA open enrollment period generally ends on Thursday, but some states have longer enrollment periods, and federal lawmakers might extend the enrollment period as part of a measure that would retroactively extend ACA subsidies for three years.
