OLYMPIA, Wash. – More than 290,000 Washingtonians selected a plan...
...40,000 fewer Washingtonians are receiving premium tax credits in 2026 than 2025. Some customers saw significant increases in their health insurance premiums, resulting in more than 61,000 customers changing their plans.
Customers also canceled their coverage more than any year prior — more than 28,000 in 2026 compared to just over 20,000 in 2025. Based on higher costs, it is expected that even more customers will disenroll before final counts are published in spring.
...Preliminary numbers show that more than 119,000 Washingtonians are receiving Cascade Care Savings and more than 188,000 are receiving federal premium tax credits.
One in Five Pennie Enrollees Drop Health Coverage Due to Expired Federal Tax Credits
High demand seen for quality affordable coverage during Open Enrollment Period.
Harrisburg, PA – Pennie, Pennsylvania’s official health insurance marketplace, concluded its 2026 Open Enrollment Period with enrollment totaling around 486,000 and with adverse effects from unprecedented cost increases. A doubling of premium costs caused around 85,000 Pennsylvanians to drop coverage, meaning that nearly 1 in 5 enrollees were unable to keep their health plan for 2026.
CoverME.gov is Maine's state-based health insurance marketplace, administered by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Health Insurance Marketplace. The 2026 Open Enrollment period recently ended, during which individuals and families were able to compare and enroll in private health insurance plans and determine eligibility for financial assistance.
Preliminary data from the 2026 Open Enrollment period indicate several emerging trends in Maine's individual health insurance market. While many Mainers enrolled in coverage through CoverME.gov, early indicators point to declining enrollment and increased affordability pressures that may affect coverage stability for consumers and the broader health insurance system.
Limited-time marketplace transition year Special Enrollment Period
This year, with the multitude of unique factors impacting access and affordability, Get Covered Illinois is using its authority as a state-based marketplace to offer a limited-time Special Enrollment Period for customers previously enrolled in a 2025 health plan through HealthCare.gov.
Who Qualifies for this Special Enrollment Period?
To qualify for this limited-time Special Enrollment Period, the enrollee must:
have been automatically renewed in a 2026 health plan through Get Covered Illinois, and
have not made an active plan selection or terminated/canceled their coverage during this past Open Enrollment Period, and
have not claimed their Get Covered Illinois account by February 1, 2026.
How long is this Special Enrollment Period available?
Back in December, I issued a strong warning that the official 2026 ACA Open Enrollment Period data would have to be taken with a huge grain of salt, since the actual effectuated enrollment data would likely take much longer to know:
...I'm bringing all of this back up again today because I strongly suspect that the situation is about to reverse itself, with the Trump Administration already preparing to brag about impressive-sounding ACA enrollment numbers for 2026 in spite of the enhanced tax credits expiring less than 60 hours from now...even though the actual negative impact of the expiring tax credits (along with several other administrative policy changes made by CMS this year) likely won't be known for several months after Open Enrollment officially ends in January.
The Maryland Health Benefit Exchange has their own Open Enrollment dashboard which, while not providing nearly as much data as New Mexico's, at least breaks out the top-line data. With the 2026 Open Enrollment Period (OEP) now over in the Old Line State, here's what their final numbers look like (barring any last-minute clerical corrections):
Total Renewals: 236,338
New Enrollees: 47,815
Total Enrollments: 255,612
Disenrollments (already subtracted from renewals)
67.4% are subsidized; 32.6% are unsubsidized
They also break out total enrollment by county, which isn't terribly relevant to me.
Final 2025 OEP enrollment in Maryland was 247,243, so this represents a 3.4% QHP selection increase vs. last year, in spite of the enhanced federal tax credits expiring...
MNsure, Minnesota's state-based ACA exchange, has posted their January Board Directors Meeting presentation, which includes the final 2026 Open Enrollment Period tally along with a bunch of other data points of interest:
Plan Year 2025 (November 1, 2024 – December 31, 2025)
Total (Medical Assistance, MinnesotaCare, QHP) 357,227
The 2026 ACA Open Enrollment Period is now officially over in every state.
For most Americans, if you missed the deadline to enroll in ACA exchange healthcare coverage, your options are pretty limited at this point...but there are some exceptions, so let's take a look.
After calling them out for some sloppy summary numbers which understated the enrollment drop by over 144,000 people out of the gate, I delved into the meat of their false argument:
...the above is fairly minor compared to the most egregiously misleading claim in the WSJ piece, which appears in the next paragraph:
The Congressional Budget Office’s ObamaCare baseline in 2024 assumed 18.9 million people would enroll in plans this year if the enhanced subsidies vanished.
