Open enrollment starts November 1. Insurers are asking for a median 15% increase on marketplace plans for 2027, and it lands on people who already absorbed a big jump this year.
The number and where it comes from
The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker went through rate filings from 276 insurers across all 50 states and DC.
The median proposed increase for 2027 is 15%. Individual requests run from -1% to 54%, so your state matters enormously.
This is the second straight year of double-digit increases.
Why this one stings more
Because the cushion is gone.
Enhanced premium tax credits, the expanded subsidies that held monthly costs down for millions of middle-class buyers, expired December 31, 2025.
The effect showed up immediately. Out-of-pocket premium payments, meaning what people actually paid after subsidies, went up an average of 58% in 2026.
KFF traces one real example. A 40-year-old in Indianapolis:
- 2025: $316 a month with the enhanced credits.
- 2026: $477 a month after they expired.
- 2027: $546 a month projected.
That is a 41% increase over two years for the same person buying the same kind of coverage.
What insurers say is driving it
Their filings are not mysterious. The reasons they give:
- Medical trend of about 10%, meaning the underlying price of health care itself.
- General inflation pushing up what providers charge.
- Health care labor shortages and higher wages.
- Claims getting more severe and billing more complex.
- GLP-1 drugs. More people on them, and they are expensive.
- Provider consolidation, which means fewer competing hospitals and less pressure to hold prices down.
There is also a spiral underneath. When subsidies shrank, healthier people did the math and dropped coverage. That leaves a sicker pool, which raises costs, which pushes more healthy people out.
We have written before about employers quietly cutting weight-loss drug coverage, and the GLP-1 line item here is the same pressure showing up on the individual market.
Who gets help and who does not
Premium tax credits generally run from 100% to 400% of the federal poverty level.
For 2027, a single person in the continental US qualifies with income up to $63,840, up from $62,600 for 2026.
Earn a dollar over that line and the credit goes to zero. Not smaller. Zero. That is the subsidy cliff, and it is why a modest raise can cost somebody more than it pays.
Dates to write down
- November 1, 2026: open enrollment opens.
- December 15: in most states, the deadline for coverage starting January 1.
- January 15, 2027: open enrollment closes on HealthCare.gov and in most states.
Some state-run exchanges run their own calendars, so check yours rather than assuming.
The single most useful thing you can do is not auto-renew. Plans get restructured, and the cheapest plan in your area last year is frequently not the cheapest this year. Re-shop on HealthCare.gov even if nothing about your life changed.
The BeezLoop Take
The 15% headline is not the story. The story is the 41% two-year climb for that Indianapolis 40-year-old, because that is what compounding looks like when a subsidy disappears in the same window that medical costs keep running at 10%.
Letting the enhanced credits expire was a choice, and it should be described as one. Nobody was forced into it by a market. Congress declined to extend them, the expiration hit December 31, and the 58% jump in what people actually paid this year is the direct consequence. Anybody who tells you premiums went up because of insurance company greed is skipping the part where the federal government stopped paying a share of the bill.
That said, the insurers do not get to hide behind their filings either. Provider consolidation is on their own list of cost drivers, and insurers have spent two decades merging with and buying the providers they negotiate against. A company citing a lack of competition as a reason for a rate increase is describing a market it helped build.
The subsidy cliff is the piece that should be indefensible to anyone across the spectrum. A single person at $63,840 gets help. At $63,841 they get nothing at all. That is not a policy, it is a drafting artifact, and it punishes exactly the people who are working their way up. It would be trivial to phase it out gradually instead. It has not been fixed because fixing it is not anyone’s priority.
The practical advice stands regardless of politics: go re-shop your plan in November. The system is built so that inertia is expensive, and the people who get hurt worst are the ones who assume renewal is the safe default.
The question
If a raise of one dollar can cost you thousands in lost subsidy, what is the system actually rewarding? And when healthy people keep leaving because prices rise, how does this market stop unwinding?
Related: consumer sentiment near a record low, and childcare costing about what a mortgage does.
Sources: Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker · NBC News · HealthCare.gov · healthinsurance.org
