California’s Health Insurance Marketplace Braces for Chaos as Shutdown Persists

by | Oct 14, 2025 | Health

California this week plans to notify Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollees that their costs could rise sharply next year unless Congress extends subsidies to help people buy health insurance.

Health care analysts say the nation’s uninsured population will rise significantly if federal lawmakers do not agree to renew covid-era tax credits, which Congress authorized in 2021 to supplement ACA subsidies.

They’re popular too. According to a KFF poll, more than three-quarters of adults, including 59% of Republicans, say they want Congress to extend the enhanced tax credits for people with low and moderate incomes. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News, the publisher of California Healthline.

The additional credits have lowered premiums, helped millions of Americans afford the cost of ACA insurance, and lowered the nation’s uninsured rate.

Last week, President Donald Trump suggested a health care deal might be in the works. And Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, long aligned with the “Make America Great Again” movement, appeared to endorse an extension of the tax credits, saying in a social media post that she was “absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year.”

However, Republican leaders want to reopen the government first, while Democrats want a deal in a bill that ends the shutdown.

If the supplemental subsidies are not extended beyond this year, the amount subsidized consumers pay for their ACA health plans is expected to more than double on average. That would be a painful cost-of-living increase for most of the country’s more than 24 million marketplace enrollees, including almost 90% of the nearly 2 million people in Covered California, the largest state-run health insurance marketplace. Analysts say the loss of enhanced credits would lead millions to drop their coverage nationally, in …

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