VOTEWIRE ANALYSIS
Two days before voters decide who controls Congress, shoppers open HealthCare.gov to find benchmark premiums up 13% for 2027 — the second steep rise since Congress let the enhanced subsidies expire.
Today is not just another Sunday in the final weekend of a campaign. It is the day millions of Americans start shopping for next year's health insurance, and the prices they see are the clearest statement of what the last Congress did. Open enrollment runs from today, November 1, through January 15, with December 15 the deadline for January 1 coverage. Voters will be comparing plans on the same weekend they decide who writes the health care rules.
The headline number, from KFF's analysis published October 30, is stark: the benchmark Silver plan — the second-lowest-cost Silver plan, the price subsidies are pegged to — will cost 13% more on average in 2027, after a 26% jump the year before: a 42% increase in two years.
Insurers name two causes in their rate filings. The underlying cost of medical care is growing faster than usual, a pressure showing up in some employer plans too. And the risk pool has worsened since the enhanced credits ended: when healthier people drop coverage, those who remain cost more to insure, and KFF puts that effect at about four percentage points a year. That is a real share of the increase, but well short of all of it.
The cliff is the point: help does not taper off as income rises. At 400% of the poverty level, it stops.
That cliff is where working people feel this most sharply. The enhanced credits, first passed in 2021 and extended in 2022, lowered marketplace premiums through 2025. They expired on December 31, 2025, and Congress has not renewed them. Above 400% of the poverty level, people now get no credit at all and pay the full price — for 2027, that line is $63,840 for a single person and $132,000 for a family of four in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C. KFF's example is painfully concrete: a 40-year-old in Indianapolis earning $65,000 paid $316 a month for a particular Anthem Silver plan in 2025 with the enhanced credit; that rose to $477 in 2026 and would reach $546 in 2027 if proposed rates held.
Most enrollees are shielded from the worst of it, because their tax credit rises with the benchmark price. The administration's fact sheet, also released October 30, says more than 75% of HealthCare.gov shoppers will continue to have access to premiums at or below $50 in 2027. That is true, and incomplete: it does not measure the people above the cutoff, who pay the full 42% increase, nor those who have already walked away. Plan selections fell by 1.2 million in the 2026 open enrollment period, paid-up enrollment was down 12% to 19.2 million by February 2026, and the Congressional Budget Office projects enrollment falling from a peak of 22.4 million in 2025 to 13.1 million in 2027. Eleven insurers had announced exits from at least one state for 2027.
Florida shows what that shrinkage looks like on the ground. The state has more marketplace enrollees than any other — over 4 million for 2026 — and Floridians who enrolled for 2026 signed up to pay an average of $106 a month after tax credits, up from about $67 the year before. Florida's 2026 open enrollment numbers declined for the first time in nearly a decade.
Other 2027 changes hit the same households. Caps on repaying excess tax credits are gone, starting with the 2026 tax year, so an income estimate that turns out too low can now produce a full repayment bill. Certain lawfully present immigrants, including refugees and asylees, lose credit eligibility, and people denied or dropped from Medicaid solely for failing the new work requirement cannot get subsidized marketplace coverage. Some states, including California, New Jersey and Virginia, are using their own money to replace part or all of the lost federal help.
So this is, in the most literal sense, a health care election. On Tuesday, voters decide all 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats, and with them whether the next Congress restores the credits, smooths the cliff so help phases out gradually instead of stopping dead at 400%, or takes the administration's different route of sending money directly to eligible Americans instead of extra subsidy payments to insurers. The House passed a three-year extension on January 8, 2026; the Senate has not taken it up. Who holds the gavel decides whether that bill ever gets a vote.
The practical task this week is twofold. If you buy coverage on the marketplace, compare plans rather than auto-renewing: prices and lineups have changed for 2027 and an income estimate deserves care now that there is no repayment cap. And if you have not voted, vote on Tuesday. The premium notice in your inbox this week and the ballot in your hand on Tuesday are the same question, asked twice: who pays for health care in America, and who decides?