The 'Affordable' Care Act: Premiums in the ACA Marketplace Set to Skyrocket in 2026

https://redstate.com/joesquire/2025/07/19/affordable-care-act-premiums-
skyrocket-2026-n2191842

Health insurance premiums for Americans buying coverage through Affordable 
Care Act marketplaces will spike by a median of 15 percent in 2026, which 
is the largest increase in more than five years. For millions of families, 
this means premium payment increases of over 75 percent as enhanced tax 
credits expire. 

What we're about to witness is the impact of government interference in 
sectors where it has no constitutional authority to operate.

This crisis was baked into the ACA from day one. When Barack Obama 
promised Americans they could keep their doctors and that his plan would 
make healthcare affordable, he was selling a fantasy that required ever-
expanding federal subsidies to maintain the illusion of success. Now, as 
those artificial supports crumble, we're seeing the true cost of 
Democratic governance that believes Washington knows better than free 
markets.

The Subsidy Addiction Economy
Since enhanced premium tax credits were introduced, ACA marketplace 
enrollment more than doubled from 11.4 million people in 2020 to 24.3 
million people in 2025. Democrats celebrated this as proof that their 
system worked. What they actually created was a massive dependency program 
that required $705 in average annual subsidies per enrollee to function, 
which is about a 44 percent reduction in what people actually paid for 
their coverage.

This was government price manipulation rather than healthcare reform. The 
enhanced credits resulted in an additional 10 million people gaining 
coverage through the marketplaces, but at what cost? When success depends 
entirely on taxpayer-funded subsidies that Congress must repeatedly 
extend, you haven't solved the underlying problem—you've just made 
taxpayers responsible for it.

Here's what should concern every American: nowhere in Article I, Section 8 
does the Constitution grant Congress authority to subsidize private health 
insurance purchases. The Commerce Clause was never intended to give 
Washington power to restructure entire industries through federal spending 
programs. Yet Democrats proceeded anyway, creating a system so dependent 
on government intervention that 4 million people will lose coverage when 
artificial supports are removed.

Market Disruption by Design
Democrats won't acknowledge this: insurers are raising premiums by an 
additional 4 percent on average, specifically because enhanced tax credits 
are expiring. This isn't corporate greed—it's basic economics. When the 
government artificially suppresses prices, markets respond by adjusting 
other variables. When those interventions end, the real costs show up.

Younger and healthier enrollees will likely drop coverage due to higher 
costs, making the marketplace sicker on average. This adverse selection 
spiral was entirely foreseeable. Insurance works when risk pools include 
healthy and sick people. Government subsidies that primarily benefit 
sicker, higher-cost enrollees destabilize these pools when the subsidies 
disappear.

The insurance companies filing these rate increases aren't the villains 
here. Rising healthcare costs, both the price of care and increased use, 
remain significant drivers for rate increases, with insurers commonly 
reporting underlying medical trends similar to last year's 8 percent. Add 
policy uncertainty, tariff impacts on pharmaceutical costs, and the 
looming subsidy cliff, and these premium spikes become inevitable.

The Human Cost of Democratic Governance
What infuriates me most about this crisis is how it will devastate the 
very people Democrats claimed to help. Rural states and communities will 
see the highest rates of coverage disruption, with larger percentages of 
residents losing marketplace coverage and becoming uninsured. Nearly 5 
million midlife adults will face higher premiums, with middle-income 
enrollees seeing average annual increases of more than $4,000.

Look at the real families behind these statistics: a middle-class family 
of four in Charlotte, North Carolina, could see their annual marketplace 
premium costs increase by nearly $9,500. A 60-year-old couple making 
$85,000 per year would see their annual premium costs jump by $15,400, 
from about $6,900 to about $22,300. 

These aren't wealthy Americans who can absorb such increases. These are 
working families who will be forced to choose between health coverage and 
other necessities.

Here's the kicker: Nearly half (45 percent) of adults enrolled in ACA 
marketplace plans identify as Republicans, with more than three-quarters 
of those identifying as "MAGA" Republicans. The very people who oppose big 
government programs are now trapped in a system that Democrats designed to 
create exactly this kind of dependency.

Congressional Republicans' Impossible Position
Democrats and their media allies will blame Congressional Republicans for 
this crisis, but that's dishonest. Republicans are being asked to 
perpetually fund a program they correctly identified as unconstitutional 
from its inception. They're being told to choose between fiscal 
responsibility and immediate human suffering, and it's a choice Democrats 
created through reckless policy design.

The enhanced tax credits were always temporary, originally scheduled to 
expire in 2022, then extended to 2025. Congress could have acted to renew 
these credits, but many Republicans correctly argued that indefinite 
extensions simply make the problem worse by increasing dependency on 
federal spending. Every extension makes the eventual cliff higher and more 
painful.

This is governance by crisis, the oldest trick in the Democratic playbook. 
Create unsustainable programs, get people dependent on them, then blame 
Republicans when fiscal reality intervenes. It's political malpractice 
disguised as compassion.

This Didn't Need to Happen
This crisis was entirely avoidable. If Democrats had respected 
constitutional limits and allowed free markets to develop affordable 
healthcare solutions, we wouldn't face this cliff. Instead, they chose to 
expand federal power, create massive dependencies, and leave Republicans 
to clean up the wreckage.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that 5.7 million people could 
lose coverage when reality breaks through Democratic fiscal fantasies. 
That human cost lies squarely with those who created an unsustainable 
system and called it reform.

The coming premium shock is a teachable moment about what happens when 
government exceeds its constitutional boundaries and disrupts functioning 
markets. Americans deserve better than governance by dependency and 
crisis. They deserve leaders who understand that lasting solutions come 
from constitutional governance and free enterprise, not endless federal 
spending programs that create more problems than they solve.

The question isn't whether Congressional Republicans will fund this broken 
system indefinitely. The question is whether Democrats will finally accept 
responsibility for the chaos they've created and work toward sustainable, 
constitutional solutions that serve American families without bankrupting 
the federal government.


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.