Why your premium jumped, and what to do about it

A five-minute read · Tatiana Andrea Real

The enhanced premium tax credits expired at the end of 2025. They had been holding Marketplace premiums down since 2021, and they were always temporary. When they ran out, the discount came off your bill.

The jump wasn’t small. Across the Marketplace, what people actually pay each month went from about $113 to about $178. That’s a 58 percent increase on the same plan, for the same person, in a different year.

The deductible is the part almost nobody is talking about. The average Marketplace deductible rose 37 percent, from $2,759 to $3,786. That’s the steepest single-year increase on record. It’s also the number that decides what a bad year costs you, and the premium isn’t.

Faced with a bigger bill, people did the logical thing and bought cheaper plans. Bronze went from 30 percent of sign-ups to 40 percent. Silver fell from 57 percent to 43 percent, a historic low.

That’s where it gets expensive. Cost-sharing reductions are the extra help that lowers your deductible and your copays, and they only exist on Silver plans. Leave Silver to save on the premium and you leave that help behind, even if you qualified for it. Enrollment in cost-sharing Silver plans hit a record low of 37 percent. Some of those people saved $40 a month and picked up thousands of dollars of risk.

So here’s what I would check before January 15.

One: your income estimate. Your credit is based on what you expect to earn next year, not on what you earned last year. A stale estimate means a wrong credit. If you’re self-employed, this is the single most valuable thing to get right.

Two: whether you qualify for cost-sharing reductions. If you do, compare Silver against Bronze on what the whole year costs, not on the monthly premium. Once the deductible is counted they often land in the opposite order.

Three: whether the Marketplace is even your best market. If you’re healthy and you don’t qualify for a subsidy, a medically underwritten private plan can price better than an unsubsidized Marketplace plan. It isn’t right for everyone. If you’re managing a condition, the ACA protections are worth more than the premium difference, and I’ll tell you that.

Open Enrollment for 2027 coverage runs November 1 through January 15. Enroll by December 15 if you want coverage starting January 1. Waiting doesn’t make any of this easier, and all three checks fit inside one fifteen-minute call.