Enhanced tax credits under the Affordable Care Act expire in two days, setting up steep premium increases in 2026 for Kentuckians who buy coverage through the state health insurance exchange. The math changes fast, and it isn’t subtle.
Priscilla Easterling of Kentucky Voices for Health says the jump from 2025 to 2026 will hit hard. According to her estimates, a plan averaging $139 per month on Jan. 1, 2025 would cost about $311 on Jan. 1, 2026. Same plan. Same benefits. Very different bill.
Looking further into 2026, some households could face premium increases approaching $1,000 a month. Easterling says people already feel cornered.
She’s heard from residents who plan to ration medication or cut back on food. That kind of tradeoff rarely ends well. Sometimes it doesn’t end at all, it just drags on.
The marketplace itself is shrinking.
CareSource will exit Kentucky’s exchange for 2026, dropping the number of participating insurers to three from four. Fewer carriers usually mean fewer pricing buffers. We think consumers will notice quickly.
Roughly 90,000 Kentuckians rely on the exchange. Easterling urges them to work with a connector, a role that functions as a free, local enrollment guide. According to her, connectors operate in all 120 counties.
She also warns against letting plans auto-renew. Shopping matters more this year. A plan that fit in 2025 may look wildly off-balance in 2026, even if nothing in your health profile changed. According to Beinsure analysts, inertia during subsidy rollbacks often drives unnecessary coverage losses.
Easterling wants exchange users to call their lawmakers. She argues legislators need to hear how sharply these premium hikes hit daily life, not in theory, but at the kitchen-table level. Silence, she worries, gets mistaken for tolerance.
At least a dozen states are moving to blunt health insurance premium hikes after Congress failed to renew enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, leaving millions of Americans facing higher out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
States including California, Colorado, Maryland and New Mexico have approved or are considering temporary measures to help residents afford coverage.
However, officials in many states warn that fully replacing the lost federal support would overwhelm state budgets.
“We can carry the cost for a little bit, but at some point, we will need Congress to act,” New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martínez told Politico. New Mexico is so far the only state to fully replace the expired subsidies using state funds.
