The end of expanded subsidies for the Affordable Care Act exchanges means more people will go without health insurance, workers, doctors, and researchers said.
Open enrollment is under way for 2026 insurance coverage, and millions of Americans are facing extreme sticker shock thanks to the end of expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies, which capped Obamacare premiums for a “benchmark” insurance plan at 8.5 percent of income. Twenty-two million people relied on that funding, at a cost of about $35 billion annually.
With the expanded subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, reverting back to a less generous subsidy level last in place in 2021, patients around the country are facing premium increases that are so extreme, they’re either reducing health insurance coverage or dropping it altogether. Some are facing price hikes many multiples higher than they paid last year; those whose costs only doubled told the Prospect they considered themselves lucky by comparison.
So long as I don’t get cancer in the next 10 minu… Oh, I got it don’t I?
Oh no. The thing that everyone warned would happen for months. It’s happening.
At my job,
It went from $150/month to $400/month.
Family rate was $800/month to $1400/month.
It’s so fucked.
At my job
While that is definitely fucked, it is due to a different problem. The probelm discussed in this article impacts people who cant get affordable insurance through their employer and, instead, go through the ACA health care exchanges.
Maybe your employer is taking advantage of the confusion around this issue to quietly make you pay a larger share?
The article describes this too: healthy people balk at the high premiums, drop their insurance, the pool of people on insurance becomes proportionally more sick people who can’t risk dropping coverage, the insurance companies realize they’ll have to pay out more per person, premiums go up.
I mean, your job might be screwing you over regardless, but there are other explanations.
I guess my point is mainly that the increase in price for employer supplied health care is unlikely to be due to the changes in subsidies. It is more likely due to gouging by someone somewhere in the chain. We don’t know enough about the impacts of losing subsidies for health care companies to adjust other prices in good faith. Someone is getting wealthy off the changes to that employer supplied health care plan.
I just want to note how ridiculous this point is as well. Not only does it again ignore that the impact to employer programs is listed in the article, you are also wrong about not knowing enough about the impacts.
Insurance companies have been planning and telegraphing these price increases for a year and explaining that the subsidies going away WILL effect commercial premiums, you are making statements from a place of total ignorance apparently.
Shit, point conceded… Thanks for correcting me.
What are you talking about, it’s literally an impact listed in the article. Did you and everyone who upvoted you just skim or not read it at all.
Shit, point conceded… Thanks for correcting me.
I know people that are employed and on ACA.
Either way they appear to be impacted by this. So the problem is the same, yes?
I was reading through some of the ACA plans as they are right now and the low income one for an individual that was “free” had a $9,500+ deductible. In any other country in that’s the cost per capita of healthcare.
“Can’t afford healthcare, we’lll tell people we are trying to help you for votes, but not actually help you at all”
In my area, the “retail” cost of ACA’s benchmark plan for a single 50-year-old is $1145/month (up from $925 in 2025).
In 2025, you’d have to earn $130,000 to actually pay that, and someone making $60k would have paid just $466 after tax credit. Same person could have gotten a cheap “Bronze” plan for $340. You could get a bronze plan for $0 out-of-pocket below $40k income.
In 2026, anyone earning over $62k will have to pay the full $1145/month. Someone earning just $58,000 could get that plan for $466/month (after credits), or a Bronze plan for $280. Have to make less than $34k to get a bronze plan $0 OOP.
The only solution to this is to abolish insurance companies entirely and implement single payer instead.
If there’s a Dem running in a primary for ‘26 and they aren’t saying this, vote for someone else.
What a ridiculous way to run a society.
Already couldn’t afford it so I don’t have insurance, its now 40% higher and I still can’t afford it. Haha! I am immune to the economic implications. If only I was immune to communicable diseases.
Follow me for more financial tricks they dont want you to know. 🙃
It screws up the entire economy and society, too. If you can’t afford insurance, you certainly can’t afford the hospital bills. And that’s taking money and resources from people that are actually doing something good for society. And it stresses a system that’s already limited, which is why the emergency room always has a multi-hour wait. And it stresses your job, because you need an unplanned absence.
ER employee here, multi-hour wait times aren’t caused by people without insurance seeking care, they’re caused by admitted patients taking up all the ER rooms. The ER would function great even with pretty substantial patient volumes because many of the primary-care tier complaints can be seen and discharged relatively quickly, many not needing anything more than a closet to speak in private for 10 minutes and imaging or prescription. In the hospital I work at, and every hospital in the city, and probably every hospital in your city, the floor that holds the most non-ER patients is the ER.
The reason for this is because shit runs downhill, and there’s not enough inpatient infrastructure because it’s expensive during the summer to have excess beds not in use just to have a reserve for flu season. This matters because even nonprofit hospitals are run to make money to pay our CEO ~50x more than the lowest paid employee, which- while a respectable ratio compared to most- is wholly unnecessary. nobody needs a multimillion a year paycheck except perhaps pediatric surgeons with a good bedside manner.
. . . that’s taking money and resources from people that are actually doing something good for society.
What the actual fuck.
What’s your plan on paying for your funeral due to lack of health care? That cost will just go to relatives.
Easy
Green burials go brrrr 🔥
Not OP, but funerals are very cheap compared to any serious illness or injury. Because of this, there are a number of conspiracy theories that things that could injure you are instead designed to kill you.
Some very quick googling says that a typical funeral is under $10k. You’ll rack that up every single day that you’re in the hospital.
Hmm didnt plumber with medical issues cause a scene recently? Hmm better make the situation worse and see if more ppl like green overalls.
To everyone who voted against Trump: you have my warmest sympathies.
To everyone else: have the day you voted for.Are third party voters in the first or second category?
Solidly second. They knew what they were doing as they were doing it.
Absolutely.
Second lol
Maybe one should market Trumps “big beautiful bill” as “unaffordable care act”.
The Dems should pay you a cool million dollars for consulting instead.
I would not mind the money…
You’d even be able to afford health insurance for a short while!
No problem here. I live in a civilized country.
I like it.
Who could have possibly foreseen this?
The people of Metternich for one.
Huh. Other modern, wealthy countries don’t have entire families of their citizens regularly bankrupted due to unexpected medical issues. Weird, wonder what they’re doing differently…
That’s what happens when the citizenry is too cowardly to do anything about it.
Not cowardly - most Americans are brainwashed to not realize there’s a problem.
Most of the Democrat party is bought off.
Actual civil engagement is replaced by brain rot arguments online.
If only there was something that could have been done to prevent this. Ah well.
Happy cakes
And yet somehow people keep voting for Republicans. Republicans make everything worse. Even for the rich, in the medium term, when they have sick workers or get shot dead on the street.
If someone punched you in the face you’d be allowed to fight back. If the government dooms you to economic death, you’re supposed to just accept it. America is incredibly cruel…
Lol, in American public schools they literally teach children from a young age that if you fight back against a bully you’ll also be punished.
I did fight back against a bully in school when I was 17 and I got arrested. The school district tried to expel me.
I had citizenship status at the time. Otherwise I was probably vulnerable to deportation. (Potentially, idk how that timeline would look like, but it happened under trump term 1…) so it was kinda terrifying.
I have to thank my mom for natualizing and therefore I got citizenship status derived from it, and therefore I was safe against that possibility of deportation.
That incident was probably one of the many factors leading to my depression.
Anyways, I hated the school district, so I just got GED instead. Got accepted to college but I stuggled with it and withdrew.
I’m probably nearly finished with college by now if I didn’t have depression.
Fuck this timeline. ACAB.
Public schools are weakening humans and indoctrinating our wise self-preservation instincts right out of us. Who runs public schools? The government. Why would the government want everyone to be non-confrontational doormats? Hmmm…
Public Schools are for brainwashing.
Same with when I was in China. Same with when I was in the US.
Its all about government control. Manipulating people against each other, divide and conquer. Nationalism, getting people to hate others across borders based on lies.
I assume some real tangible humans were behind these healthcare-cutting decisions. Real tangible humans are indeed punchable.
The term you’re looking for is social murder.
Americans voted for this. Have the day you voted for. It’s just a shame that it affects all the others who tried to warn you, tried to stop you, and were disenfranchised.
I would very much like the day I voted for. Maybe even the day I voted for in spring 2016…
You need to stop saying shit like this. First of all, most people did NOT vote for the orange taco pedophile Nazi, despite whatever fudged numbers he’s pulled out of his arse. Secondly, I guarantee nobody voted for cut healthcare, cut nutrition, masked unidentified fake law enforcement kidnapping brown people. Nobody voted for the orange taco Nazi to renovate the big white government residence without permits or authorization or for him to decorate his borrowed office with gaudy gold embellishments while the citizens whose interests he’s supposed to be serving, he instead removes all their resources to leave them starving & homeless. I guarantee nobody voted for any of that draconian bullshit. Orange taco Nazi fired all the government workers who’d’ve stopped him from committing these crimes against humanity, and now with no checks & balances* in his way he’s becoming Hitler & Kim Il Sung.
*Checks & Balances, remember those? They used to be the level-headed, logical presidential advisors who would stop the president in case he’s about to do something illegal or selfish or stupid.
The orange taco Nazi made sure that only evil greedy wealthy compassionate-less Nazi sympathizers surround him everywhere he goes.
First of all, most people did NOT vote for the orange taco pedophile Nazi, despite whatever fudged numbers he’s pulled out of his arse.
No, you need to stop saying shit like this. Americans collectively voted for this in the only ways that matter. Anything else you want to say is just copium designed to delude yourself into thinking things aren’t as bad as they are. They are that bad and we literally asked for it. Stop trying to downplay that fact.
we literally asked for it
Do you understand the definition of “we?”
I DID NOT VOTE FOR ANY OF THIS! Leave ME out of your own sick “WE” horrorscape.
I do, but apparently you do not. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference what you personally voted for and if you haven’t figured that out by now then there’s no point in continuing this conversation.
“You voted for this. You are getting what you deserve.”
I’m sorry if you voted for trump. I understand your bitterness and your impulse to drag everyone else into your miserable hellscape. But I didn’t vote for trump. So stop blaming the current state of politics on people who did not vote for trump.
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No, you don’t. You’re blaming the non problems for the problems. You have no clue what you’re talking about whatsoever.
