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If you have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, you are likely to see dramatic increases in your costs next year. This is due to a combination of factors that a July 18, 2025, article from CBS News calls a “one-two punch” of “double-digit premium increases along with a sharp drop in the federal subsidies that most consumers depend on to buy the coverage.”
Insurance companies participating in the marketplace are requesting the largest premium increases in more than five years. At the same time, temporary enhanced federal subsidies, first expanded in response to the pandemic, expire at the end of 2025.
During the pandemic, emergency provisions extended eligibility up the income scale and streamlined the process for calculating subsidy amounts. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” terminates these supports. It limits who qualifies and reintroduces documentation requirements and eligibility verification, steps that are likely to reduce enrollment. Unless Congress intervenes to extend the enhanced subsidies, out-of-pocket costs for consumers will revert to pre-pandemic levels.
The Kaiser Family Foundation projects that ACA enrollees will see premium payments rise by over 75 percent on average in 2026 if enhanced subsidies are not renewed. The temporary credits reduced annual premiums by an average of $705 and helped increase marketplace enrollment from 11 million in 2020 to more than 21 million in 2024.
The expiration of these tax credits eliminates the price cap that previously limited ACA benchmark premiums to 8.5 percent of household income. Many families who receive subsidies will face double-digit premium increases or lose coverage entirely.
An article by Elisabeth Buchwald in MarketWatch cites Congressional Budget Office projections of a 93 percent average premium increase for subsidized enrollees and a projected 4.2 million increase in the number of uninsured Americans by 2034. The greatest impact would likely fall on young adults, older enrollees, and those living in rural areas.
