Julie Appleby, Author at ��ýҕ�l Health News

Tax Time Brings Surprises for Some Who Receive ACA Subsidies

Julie Appleby — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Tax time can come with big surprises for some people who have Affordable Care Act coverage, including owing money back to the government for premium subsidies received during the previous year.

More changes lie ahead that make it important for those getting subsidies in 2026 to track their income and take steps to protect against that kind of financial hit.

First, the basics of how the subsidies work.

Enrollees pay a percentage of their household income toward their health insurance premiums based on a sliding scale, ranging in 2025 from nothing for very low-income people to 8.5% at higher income levels. Subsidies, usually paid directly to insurers, cover the rest.

The income calculation done during open enrollment is an estimate of what a household thinks it will earn in the coming year. At tax time, ACA enrollees must reconcile what they received in subsidies with what they actually earned. If their income rose, they might owe some of the subsidies back.

But don’t skip filing! People who get ACA subsidies must file tax returns no matter their income, and that is becoming even more important: The Trump administration people from subsidy eligibility if they have gone two consecutive years without filing, and it is proposing lowering that to one year.

Beware Surprise Tax Bills

All enrollees who received subsidies for ACA coverage in 2025 — — need to include a special form, the , with their tax filings. That form is used to reconcile a person’s actual income with the amount of subsidies they received, information the IRS mails them on a separate, . Subsidy amounts are based in part on the income projections they made when they enrolled in their ACA plans.

And that can lead to surprises. Some may find they get money back if their income was less than they estimated. But, if their income went above their initial or updated estimates, they probably qualify for less in assistance and will have to pay money back.

Groups that help people file their taxes say it’s not always easy for people to accurately estimate their income for the year ahead, especially those who run their own businesses, work multiple jobs, or have work that comes with varying hours.

Clients will say, “I can make anywhere between $20,000 and $45,000 next year. I just don’t know,” said Katie Alexander, director of training and volunteers for the health and economic opportunity program at Pisgah Legal Services, a western North Carolina nonprofit that provides free tax and health insurance help to people with low incomes.

Still, for taxes being filed now for the 2025 tax year, on what many people must repay.

That cap is $375 for a single individual who earned less than $31,300 in 2025, or . The maximum owed under that sliding scale for people whose income is on the higher end of the range is $1,625 for an individual and $3,250 for a family.

There is no repayment cap for people earning more than four times the federal poverty level — totaling $62,600 in 2025 for an individual or $106,600 for a family of three — so they could owe back all amounts that exceeded their eligibility.

“The amount is just so staggering for folks,” Alexander said.

One woman whom Pisgah staff helped with pulling together her taxes for 2025 made just above $50,000, which was more than she initially estimated. Her repayment was capped at $1,625, Alexander said. Without that cap, she would have owed $4,000, a substantial chunk of her annual income.

Plan Ahead: The Rules Will Be Tougher Next Tax Season

Congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump last summer, . That means come next year’s tax season, there will be no sliding-scale limit to how much people could owe back in subsidies for 2026 if their income exceeds their projections.

“That’s just going to be absolutely devastating,” Alexander said.

There are at least two other things to keep in mind, both stemming from covid-era enhanced tax credits, which expired at the end of last year because Congress did not extend them. One is that the amount of household income people must pay toward their premiums this year before subsidies kick in has risen to just over 2% on the low end of the income scale and up to nearly 10% for higher-income earners.

The second is that households earning over four times the federal poverty level no longer qualify for ACA subsidies.

The biggest financial hit could be felt by enrollees whose income rises enough during the year to exceed four times the poverty level. In that case, they would owe back all the subsidies they receive in 2026.

And that could be a lot.

In 2025, for example, the average monthly premium for ACA coverage was $619, but the average enrollee received subsidies worth enough to offset all but $74 of that, according to the .

There’s another twist for some. Because the enhanced credits were not extended, people are paying, on average, double the amount toward their premiums this year, so they may be looking to add to their incomes to cover the cost. A found that 43% of people who remained enrolled in coverage this year are planning to work more hours or get additional work to cover those costs.

“That makes sense, but it can also present a risk of being eligible for less subsidy money than they thought, or even mean they would have to repay the entire tax credit,” said Cynthia Cox, senior vice president and director of the Program on the ACA at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes ��ýҕ�l Health News.

People can update their projected income at the marketplace website as it changes during the year.

Pisgah staff are calling people they’ve worked with and saying, “Please, please, please, if your income changes, call us so we can adjust your income through the marketplace,” Alexander said.

As much as possible, keep track of income during the year. This isn’t easy, especially for workers who don’t have a job with regular paychecks.

“If you’re meeting with a CPA to talk about taxes, have a conversation to make sure you’re making enough money to afford your costs, but not too much to lose eligibility for a subsidy,” Cox said. “Contributing toward a retirement plan or a health savings account can lower part of your income that counts toward subsidy eligibility.”

Others might choose to dial back their work hours or forgo a new client contract.

“If taking that extra shift means putting you over the line of 400% of the federal poverty level and that’s going to cost you $10,000 in repayments, maybe don’t take that shift,” said Jason Levitis, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who follows ACA and tax policy issues.

Are you struggling to afford your health insurance? Have you decided to forgo coverage? to contact ��ýҕ�l Health News and share your story.

��ýҕ�l Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about .

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Trump Team Claims Successes Against ACA Fraud While Pushing for More Controls

Julie Appleby — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Complaints about enrollment fraud in Affordable Care Act health insurance coverage have bedeviled the federal marketplace for years.

Now, the Trump administration in reducing the problem while simultaneously saying more controls are needed.

It has proposed a for next year, including stepped-up requirements for some applicants to prove eligibility for subsidies or enrollment and new scrutiny of sales agents and marketing practices.

While there is a general acknowledgment that there is fraud in the ACA marketplace, some health policy analysts say these new requirements miss that mark and instead will make it harder for people who are eligible to enroll.

“There is a trade-off, particularly with the provisions focused on consumers, that maybe it will prevent some fraudulent enrollment, but also potentially a large number of valid applicants,” said Matthew Fiedler, a senior fellow with the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution.

In its proposal, though, the administration expresses optimism that efforts already in place will continue to pay off, despite the fact that the number of complaints about unauthorized enrollment or switching rose to 341,906 in 2025, compared with 229,734 the year before Donald Trump took office. Still, according to the rule, “program integrity measures implemented during the past year,” along with the expiration of enhanced tax credits, “are likely to lead to a decrease” in complaints in 2026.

The end of those tax credits also means the amount people pay toward their coverage has increased. Data released Jan. 28 by federal officials showed a year-over-year enrollments across the federal healthcare.gov marketplace and those run by states. And from KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes ��ýҕ�l Health News, found that of those who remained covered this year, 80% said their premiums or other costs are higher than they were last year, with 51% saying they are “a lot higher.”

Katie Keith, a director at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, said the administration was sending mixed messages, on one hand “talking about its fraud-fighting efforts” being successful, but releasing a proposed rule “that says we have to have all these restrictions on consumers because of fraud.”

Closing Consumer Windows

Last year, the Trump administration reversed some of the Biden administration’s ACA efforts, including eliminating a special enrollment period for low-income people that let them sign up year-round.

This year’s rule includes proposed changes aimed at preventing people from fudging their incomes — higher or lower — to qualify for subsidies.

For instance, applicants whose federal data shows they were previously below the poverty level — and thus not eligible for subsidies — would have to submit additional income verification to show they expect to earn above the poverty level in the coming year.

Another part of the proposed rule would require the federal marketplace, used by 30 states, to step up verification efforts for people who want to sign up outside of the ACA’s annual open enrollment period, for reasons including getting married, adopting a baby, or losing other coverage. Currently, the marketplaces conduct such reviews only when people say they qualify because they lost other insurance, according to an .

The income verification requirements “will be burdensome,” she said.

Some ACA applicants, especially those running small businesses or working several part-time jobs, find it more difficult to estimate or document their anticipated income and might find they’re prevented from getting subsidies, Keith and other analysts said.

These proposals are among policies reprised from last year’s ACA rule and initially intended to take effect in 2026. But several cities filed a lawsuit to challenge those regulations. The judge overseeing the case pending its outcome.

In his order issuing a temporary stay, questioned whether the government adequately responded to questions about the accuracy of data it used in citing widespread fraud.

Additionally, many of the provisions purportedly targeting fraud are “unsupported by data showing that if enacted, they will, in fact, reduce any such fraud,” the judge wrote.

The proposal for 2027 has “new supporting information since the original policies were established” that includes clarifying what documentation is needed for some of the verification processes, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services spokesperson Catherine Howden said in an email. In addition, she said that CMS is now reviewing public comments that have been submitted before finalizing the provisions.

Targeting Fraud by Agents, Marketers

Critics of the ACA argue that more-generous subsidies put in place as a response to the covid pandemic, in addition to other changes during the Biden administration, led rogue brokers to enroll or switch people without their consent, seeking to collect commissions. That could be done easily, critics say, because with many plans, subsidies covered the entire premium. The lack of a monthly bill made it easier to sign people up without their knowledge — a long-running problem . When that happens it can leave people unable to access their coverage .

Those expanded subsidies have now expired, but the administration’s proposed rule would still add requirements for agents. For example, they would be barred from providing cash or most other freebies as incentives to enroll, have to use a standard consent form that must be signed by the consumer, and be held responsible if they hired a marketing firm that used questionable advertising to lure customers. That includes touting nonexistent gift cards or making websites look like official government ACA portals. Such websites would have to be removed.

“This would help ensure no additional consumers would see the advertisement and be misled,” the proposal says.

Insurance agents told ��ýҕ�l Health News that some of the proposals, such as delineating what counts as a misleading marketing effort, are good first steps but might not fully address concerns about unauthorized enrollment.

It doesn’t “address all the system vulnerabilities,” said Jason Fine, who runs a brokerage in Florida. He said he has filed more than 100 reports about unauthorized rivals accessing his clients’ coverage over the past two years but has yet to see any of those agents removed from the federal marketplace.

More than 850 agents had their certification suspended with little notice in late 2024 under the Biden administration, which said it was looking into complaints about them. The Trump administration told the Government Accountability Office in May that it had reinstated all or most of those agents to fulfill its “statutory and regulatory” responsibilities, according from the independent oversight group. The report, which outlined long-running fraud problems in the ACA, noted that CMS would continue to monitor those agents and could take “further enforcement action” against them.

Another Biden rule, this one aimed at combating unauthorized sign-ups, remains in place and requires agents to have three-way calls with the client and a federal marketplace call center representative for some enrollments or plan changes.

But Fine and other agents said bad actors are finding ways around that requirement, including by faking that they are the customer during the calls. That contention is backed up in the administration’s new proposal, which notes that federal regulators have received reports that some brokers “may be using artificial intelligence to impersonate consumers and falsely attest to household income.”

Still, the proposal does not include some of the measures agents say would improve the situation.

Fine, for example, said the federal marketplace should more proactively flag unusual activity on consumer accounts, such as multiple agent changes or switches to new insurers within a short period of time, or changes made in the dead of night.

“Overnight is when a lot of this fraud occurs,” Fine said. “No one is changing their insurance at 4 a.m., and that should trigger an automatic fraud alert.” He also wants to see a proposal to rein in overseas call centers that contact U.S. residents — often repeatedly, sometimes making claims about free gift cards or other nonexistent perks — then send their information to agents looking to enroll them or switch their ACA plans.

Others, including Ronnell Nolan, president of Health Agents for America, have also long called for two-factor authentication, similar to what banks require, to confirm that enrollments or switches are approved by the consumer. The 20 states, plus the District of Columbia, that run their own marketplaces incorporate additional measures, including two-factor authentication, few of the types of problems that the federal market has seen, Nolan said. The administration’s proposed rule does not call for this protection.

A conservative think tank, the , estimates there are several million fraudulent enrollments, but other groups — including the GAO, using a different methodology — have put the estimate far lower.

Based on its preliminary analysis, the GAO estimated there were “at least 160,000 applications in plan year 2024 that had likely unauthorized changes,” representing about 1.5% of all applications.

Meanwhile, Brookings’ Fiedler said the debate around the proposal highlights an ongoing question — not just how much fraud exists or what to do about it, but “how much government should help people get covered at all.”

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In the Affordability Alphabet Soup of the ACA and EHBs, a Link to Higher Premiums Isn’t Clear-Cut

Julie Appleby — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:30:00 +0000

When President Donald Trump unveiled his one-page outline to address health care spending, dubbed “,” he specifically mentioned the Affordable Care Act’s role in driving up costs.

“I call it the unaffordable care act,” he said. He reprised the line in his address, blaming “the crushing cost of health care” on Obamacare.

Trump’s words play off an ongoing congressional debate that began late last year, ahead of the expiration of the enhanced tax subsidies that had lowered the cost of ACA insurance for millions of Americans.

Democrats, looking toward the November midterm elections, continue to use that lapse to focus public attention on affordability.

Republicans take a different view, routinely pointing to specific provisions as culprits. Among them, the law’s essential health benefits mandate, which says Obamacare plans must cover certain basic services — including emergency care, hospitalization, maternity care, and prescription drugs — without annual or lifetime dollar limits while enrolled.

But my colleague Sarah Boden and I found that connecting EHBs to the premium increases consumers are feeling is not a straight line.

For starters, it’s clear that ACA premiums have increased.

An analysis by the right-leaning Paragon Health Institute shows that the average Obamacare premium for a 50-year-old since 2014. The average premium for employer-based plans grew 68% during the same period.

Still, that’s not the whole picture.

Pre-ACA, coverage offered by employer plans was generally more generous and, therefore, costlier than coverage under individual market plans. Individual plans were cheaper also because they could bar applicants with health problems. Beginning in 2014, the ACA forced individual policies to look more like employer plans. As a result, premiums rose — sometimes faster than those of job-based plans.

, however, were on the rise before the ACA took effect.

An analysis by Jonathan Gruber at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that premiums grew by at least 10% a year from 2008 to 2010.

So do EHBs raise premiums? In some ways, yes, compared with pre-ACA plans that might not have covered now-required services like maternity care or prescription drugs.

But in other ways, EHBs can save money because they’ve increased access to preventive care, said , a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Joseph Antos, a senior fellow emeritus at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said other parts of the ACA — such as requiring insurers to accept anyone, regardless of health status, and limiting insurers’ ability to charge older people more — also played roles in boosting premiums.

“It’s practically impossible to tease any one thing out,” Antos said.

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Many ACA Customers Are Paying Higher Premiums. Most Blame Trump and Republicans, Poll Finds.

Julie Appleby — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:01:00 +0000

Most people who get their health coverage through the Affordable Care Act say they face sharply higher costs, with many worried they will have to pare back other expenses to cover them, according to a . Some are uncertain whether they will be able to continue paying their premiums all year.

Still, 69% of those enrolled last year signed up again this year, often for less generous coverage. About 9% said they had to forgo insurance, according to the survey by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes ��ýҕ�l Health News.

The KFF poll revisited the people who responded to of Affordable Care Act enrollees during open enrollment for ACA plans.

Steve Davis, a 64-year-old retired car salesman in Rogersville, Tennessee, who participated in both polls, said he was looking at an annual premium of about $14,000 to renew his ACA coverage this year. He didn’t qualify for enough of a tax credit to defray the cost, he said, after Congress gridlocked on an extension of more-generous subsidies put in place under President Joe Biden.

But things worked out for Davis. He landed a job at a convenience store that came with insurance, with his share costing about $100 more a month than the $300 he paid for an ACA plan last year, before the enhanced tax credits expired.

“As it happened, the Lord provided and my insurance kicked in through my employer,” he told ��ýҕ�l Health News.

In the November survey, many respondents were not sure what they would do for their health insurance in the coming year.

Some were waiting to see whether Congress would extend the enhanced premium subsidies, which had helped many people get lower-cost — or even zero-cost — health premiums.

Congress’ inaction left some consumers in a bind.

Now, the new poll found, affordability issues are hitting home as the midterm election approaches. And that might play a role in competitive districts, creating headwinds for Republicans.

Midterm Signals

Across all respondents who were registered to vote, the poll found more than half place “a lot” of blame for rising costs on Republicans in Congress (54%), with a similar share putting the same level of blame on President Donald Trump (53%). A smaller group placed a lot of the blame on congressional Democrats (34%). Among independents, a group expected to be a key factor in many districts, the percentages putting a lot of the blame on the GOP (56%) and Trump (58%) were higher.

Among Republicans, 60% placed a lot of the blame on Democrats in Congress.

“Those who have marketplace coverage, who remained on it, they’re really struggling with health care costs,” said Lunna Lopes, senior survey manager for KFF.

While more than half (55%) of returning ACA enrollees said they will have to pare back on other household expenses to cover health care costs, about 17% said they might not be able to continue paying insurance premiums throughout the year.

Overall, 80% of those who reenrolled for 2026 said their premiums, deductibles, or other costs are higher this year than last, with 51% saying they are “a lot higher.”

About three-quarters of ACA enrollees in the survey who were registered voters said the cost of health care will have an impact on their decision to vote — and on which party’s candidate they support.

Democrats were more than twice as likely as Republicans to say those costs will have a major impact on their decision.

“Democrats seem particularly more energized by health care costs than their Republican counterparts,” Lopes said.

Enrollment Tally Down

Data released Jan. 28 by federal officials showed that about 23 million people enrolled in Obamacare plans across the federal healthcare.gov marketplace and those run by states, about 1.2 million fewer than in 2025.

But it isn’t yet known how many are paying their monthly premiums on time, and many analysts expect overall enrollment numbers to fall as that data becomes available in the coming months.

For most people, having to pay more for premiums this year was mainly due to the expiration of the enhanced tax cuts, pollsters noted. Because the subsidies that remain are less generous, households have to pay more of their income toward coverage. Congressional inaction also meant the restoration of an income cap for subsidies at four times the poverty level, or $62,600 for an individual, sticking people like Davis with higher bills.

Not everyone saw increases.

Matthew Rutledge, a 32-year-old substitute teacher in Apple Valley, California, who participated in both KFF polls, said he qualified as low-income and his subsidies fully offset his monthly premium payment, just as they did last year. He does have copayments when he sees a doctor or accesses other medical care, but he told ��ýҕ�l Health News that “as long as the premium doesn’t go up, I’m fine with it.”

Rising premiums are fueled by a variety of factors, including hospital costs, doctors’ services, and the prices of drugs.

To lower premiums, insurers offer plans with higher deductibles or copayments. In the ACA, plans with lower premiums but higher deductibles are called “catastrophic” or “bronze” plans. “Silver” plans generally balance premiums and out-of-pocket spending, while the highest-premium plans with lower deductibles are “gold” or “platinum.”

About 28% of those who stayed in the ACA marketplaces switched plans, the pollsters noted.

One 56-year-old Texas man told pollsters that his family’s income exceeded the cap for subsidies, so they switched down from a gold plan to a bronze. “Even doing that, our premiums are three times what they were in 2025, with lower plan features and a higher deductible,” he said, according to a KFF poll news release.

For some, reenrolling was not a viable option.

In addition to the 9% who said they are now uninsured, about 5% said they switched to some type of non-ACA coverage.

Some people, like Davis, landed job-based coverage, while others found they qualified for Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for low-income residents.

Such churn in and out of ACA coverage is not unusual, Lopes noted. “People get a job. They get married. They age into Medicare,” the program for older or disabled people, she said.

The poll highlighted that many people dropping coverage were younger, between 18 and 29. About 14% of people in that range now say they are uninsured.

That’s not surprising, given that younger people tend to use health coverage less. ACA insurers said one reason they raised premiums this year was because they expected more young or healthy people to drop out, leaving them with a higher share of older, more costly enrollees. Among those 50 or older, the poll found that only 7% are now uninsured.

GOP critics of the now-expired enhanced subsidies say they were always meant to be temporary. Extending them would have cost about $350 billion from 2026 to 2035, .

But not extending them means more people will become uninsured. The CBO said the extension would have meant 3.8 million more people having insurance coverage in 2035.

KFF pollsters, in February and early March, surveyed 1,117 U.S. adults, more than 80% of the ACA enrollees originally polled in November, online and by telephone. The margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points for the full sample.

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Evidence Shows ACA’s Mandated Benefits Alone Don’t Drive Up Costs. The Debate Continues.

Julie Appleby — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0000

In January, when President Donald Trump unveiled his one-page outline to address health care spending, dubbed “,” he specifically mentioned the Affordable Care Act’s role in driving up costs.

“I call it the unaffordable care act,” he said. He reprised the line in his address, blaming “the crushing cost of health care” on Obamacare.

Trump’s words also play off an ongoing congressional debate that began late last year with the expiration of the enhanced tax subsidies that had lowered the cost of ACA insurance for millions of Americans — and thrust the issue of ACA-related costs back to center stage.

Without those enhanced subsidies, the amount people pay toward monthly Obamacare premiums doubled, on average. The number of people enrolled in ACA coverage for this year has dropped by more than a million, and experts say more people could abandon coverage once premiums come due. Democrats are using this development to crank up the heat on Republicans ahead of the November elections and steer the conversation on the affordability issue.

Republicans fault the law itself for driving up these costs. For instance, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) that premiums “skyrocketed across the country since it took effect.”

Critics routinely point to several provisions within the ACA as the culprits — among them, essential health benefits, or EHBs. Under the law, Obamacare plans must cover certain essential services, including emergency care, hospitalization, maternity, and prescription drugs, without annual or lifetime dollar limits. But connecting EHBs to the premium increases felt by consumers is not straightforward.

Here’s a primer on key issues involved.

Checking the Numbers

It’s clear that Obamacare premiums have increased.

An analysis by the right-leaning Paragon Health Institute shows that the average premium for a 50-year-old with Obamacare since 2014. The average premium for employer-based plans grew 68% during that same time.

Paragon’s president, , told ��ýҕ�l Health News that this shows the ACA has made health care on the individual market more expensive.

Still, the comparison overlooks a couple of points. Pre-ACA, employer plans generally offered more generous coverage than individual market plans, so work-based coverage cost more. And individual plans were cheaper in part because they could bar applicants with health problems. Beginning in 2014, the ACA forced individual policies to look more like employer plans, covering a broader range of benefits and accepting both healthy and unhealthy applicants. As a result, premiums rose that first year. In the years that followed, ACA plans often experienced faster growth in premiums than job-based plans. Some policy analysts say this isn’t surprising because ACA plans started at a lower dollar base and had more room to rise.

States that saw less dramatic post-ACA premium increases, such as Massachusetts and New York, already mandated that individual-market plans provide EHB-like coverage, noted , a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. These states also had higher premiums due to that and other provisions, such as not allowing plans to exclude people with preexisting conditions.

“It was a combination of things,” he said.

Blase acknowledges that the two types of insurance started at different price points. But he said the percentage change over time shows that the ACA faces “underlying inflationary pressures” — including the now-expired, more generous, covid pandemic-era subsidies — that affect its policyholders more so than employer plans.

Aside from that point, however, were on the rise even before the ACA took effect.

An analysis by Jonathan Gruber at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that between 2008 and 2010, premiums grew by at least 10% a year and were highly variable across states and insurers.

Consumers’ Other Costs

Over time, ACA deductibles — the amounts policyholders must satisfy in a given year before insurance kicks in — have seen large increases, with “bronze” plans now averaging $7,476 annually, up from $5,113 in 2014, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes ��ýҕ�l Health News. Bronze plans tend to have lower premiums than the other metal-level categories — “silver,” “gold,” and “platinum” — in part because of their higher deductibles.

The Trump administration is doubling down on high-deductible plans as part of its emphasis on affordability, making it easier this year for people age 30 and up to qualify for what are called “catastrophic plans.” These come with even larger deductibles than bronze plans.

The administration to cement those changes, saying it was designed to lower premiums and expand choices. It would raise next year’s deductibles for catastrophic plans to $15,600 a year for an individual or around $30,000 for a family. It isn’t clear how popular such plans would be. Detailed enrollment figures for this year are not yet available, but estimates indicate chose catastrophic plans in 2025, and consumers can’t use federal subsidies to purchase them.

Before this Trump proposal, though, recent data showed that the rising rate of ACA plan deductibles had not outpaced deductibles for employer plans.

The weighted average — a calculation that gives more weight to ACA plans with the most people enrolled — shows in annual deductible amounts since 2014, from $1,881 to $2,912. During that same period, deductibles in plans offered by 59%, from $1,186 to $1,886, according to KFF’s annual employer survey.

Essential What?

To be clear, the ACA’s catastrophic and bronze plans must cover essential health benefits, as do all Obamacare plans. These EHBs fall into 10 categories of medical services and were included in the ACA to ensure individual policies meet a minimum standard of coverage and are comparable to employer-based health insurance.

Preventive services, such as annual checkups, vaccines, and certain cancer screenings, must be covered at no additional cost to patients. All plans must completely cover the cost of specific vaccines, including the annual flu shot. And insurers cannot refuse to pay for emergency care provided at an out-of-network hospital. Other EHBs are subject to out-of-pocket costs, such as copays at the doctor’s office or pharmacy counter.

In some ways, EHBs save money because they’ve increased access to preventive care, said , a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Services such as cancer screenings and lab tests can lead to earlier detection of serious conditions, when treatment is less costly, and positive outcomes are more likely.

“If you look down the list of essential health benefits, I think most people would reach the judgment that those are health care services that people should have access to,” said Larry Levitt, KFF’s executive vice president for health policy.

Joseph Antos, a senior fellow emeritus at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said ACA requirements — such as requiring insurers to accept anyone, regardless of their health status, and limiting insurers’ ability to charge older people more for coverage — also have played roles in boosting premiums.

“Really, it’s practically impossible to tease any one thing out,” Antos said.

States do have latitude to add benefits that fall under the EHB umbrella. For example, bariatric surgery is covered as an EHB in , but not in . Pennsylvania’s EHBs also don’t include hearing aids, but do.

But the Trump administration’s 2027 regulatory proposal : When “states enact benefit mandates, plan premiums must generally increase to account for the additional coverage,” it reads. It also signals that added benefits can raise consumer costs and proposes that states be required to use their own funds to offset some of those costs.

Paragon’s Blase echoed this take in his bottom line. Mandating that plans cover EHBs without annual or lifetime caps, as required under the ACA law, encourages clinicians to overbill and overprescribe, he said. That drives up premiums and means a bigger check for insurers and medical providers at the expense of taxpayers. “You just turn patients into money factories,” he said.

, a senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, disagrees, saying that whatever EHBs’ role, they aren’t to blame for the year-over-year premium hikes.

People aren’t consuming medical care at exponential rates just because certain services are now covered: “Me not paying anything for that colonoscopy doesn’t make me want to get more of them,” she said.

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When It Comes to Health Insurance, Federal Dollars Support More Than ACA Plans

Julie Appleby — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Subsidies. Love ’em or hate them, they dominated the news during the Affordable Care Act’s sign-up season, and their reduction is now hitting many enrollees in the pocketbook.

While lawmakers continue to disagree on a way forward, keeps the issue front and center, it would be understandable to think these are the only taxpayer-funded health insurance subsidies in the U.S. system.

But .

“The vast majority of people with health insurance for it, from Medicaid to Medicare to the ACA to employer-sponsored insurance,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes ��ýҕ�l Health News.

These broad taxpayer supports are rarely discussed, though, as they apply to work-based coverage. So, let’s take a look.

Adding Up the Tax Breaks

of the more than on Medicare, the second-largest program in the federal budget behind Social Security, comes from general federal funds. The rest comes from payroll taxes and the monthly premiums paid by enrollees, who number .

Medicaid — the nation’s largest health insurer, covering more than 70 million low-income people — costs annually. It’s jointly financed by the federal government (65%) and states (35%).

For both programs, expenses are partially funded with taxpayer dollars. A less obvious form of federal support comes through employer-sponsored health coverage. Here, the impact on the federal bottom line is less visible, as hundreds of billions of dollars never reach the U.S. Treasury because it takes the form of tax breaks for employers and workers.

“It’s a world apart from Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare — from the government writing checks to people,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Job-based insurance provides coverage for under age 65. (By comparison, about 23 million people enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans for this year, generally because they don’t have job-based insurance. Extending the enhanced ACA subsidies that expired at the end of 2025 over a decade, or roughly $35 billion annually.)

In fact, contributions to employer-sponsored health plans are the single-largest “exclusion” — a tax policy that allows certain income to be exempt from taxes — in the federal budget. For this fiscal year, the , according to the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office.

The money employers spend to offer health coverage to their employees can be written off as a business expense. And workers who receive this benefit don’t have to pay income or payroll taxes on its value.

or even thousands of dollars a year for workers. The amount varies, with the biggest breaks going to those with the most expensive health plans and those whose wages put them in the upper tax brackets. Contributions to health savings accounts related to health insurance.

But the exclusion can be a difficult concept for insured workers to wrap their heads around, as most employees still contribute a portion of their pay to health coverage.

Even though they’re not taxed on that, “it doesn’t necessarily feel like a subsidy to people,” Levitt said. “They do feel like they’re paying.”

Baked Into the Tax System

The tax treatment evolved along with work-based health insurance policies in the U.S., fueled during World War II, when wage and price controls spurred interest in offering health coverage to lure workers. It was enacted into tax law in 1954.

Backers, which often include labor unions and employers, say it encourages companies to offer health insurance, as most large companies do. Because of the cost, smaller companies are less likely to do so, even with the tax incentive. Also, for workers, getting $1 of health care coverage is worth more than an extra dollar in wages, which would be taxed and, thus, worth less.

Opponents of the tax break, however, note the lost revenue to the Treasury and that the tax exclusion, according to some economists, leads employers and workers to choose the most generous — and expensive — health insurance offered, which they say drives up health care spending. The tax break benefits wealthier workers more than those in lower-income tax brackets, and economists also say the amounts employers pay for health insurance might otherwise be spent on boosting workers’ wages.

While there is currently no pending legislation to modify the tax break, the growing federal deficit has some the policy will change. Benefit experts say the outcome would vary.

“It’s not clear that it would wind up in increased wages for everyone,” said KFF’s Levitt. “Some workers have more negotiating leverage than others.”

to cap or eliminate the exclusion have all failed.

“It’s had a bipartisan target on its back for 40 years,” said Paul Fronstin, a director at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

Any change, however, “would raise some revenue, but it’s also a tax increase for workers,” Fronstin noted. “What would that mean, if their taxes go up? Do wages go up because they’re not getting the same tax breaks? There will be winners and losers in that equation.”

Still, because job-based coverage is the way so many Americans get health insurance, some policy experts warn that eliminating or even lowering the exclusion could remove an incentive for employers to offer coverage. While some employers would likely keep offering coverage even without the tax break — because it is a benefit that helps attract and retain workers — it is a huge expense, so others might drop it. Average family premiums cost an employer nearly $27,000 last year, .

“These are businesses, which weigh the costs of offering insurance, which have gone up dramatically,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, CEO of the , an organization of large public and private employers that offer health insurance to their workers. “If there’s not some sort of tax incentive, I would expect them to revisit whether they would bear those costs.”

Cannon, of the Cato Institute, considers the tax policy bad because it takes choice away from workers, who might rather have increased wages, even if they are taxed. Those additional wages, he argues, could then be invested in tax-advantaged health savings accounts, used to pay medical costs.

Under the current tax break approach, “you are effectively saying let the employer control a huge chunk of your earnings and enroll in the plan the employer chooses,” he argues.

Employers counter by saying they are better able to negotiate higher-quality, lower-cost health insurance packages than individuals could on their own.

Mitchell, at the employer group, said, “It is challenging for an enormous employer to negotiate fair prices with the large consolidated systems. So it’s hard to imagine how an individual would be able to navigate our current system.”

She also disputes arguments that the tax break leads to higher health care prices, driven by overly generous employer plans that lead insured workers to use more health services.

“That’s a tired economic theory that doesn’t apply in health care,” she said. “People don’t shop for health care because they want more of it. They use health care because they need it. It’s fundamentally different.”

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ACA Subsidies Expired. Open Enrollment Ended. But It Will Still Take Awhile To Register the Results.

Julie Appleby — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:30:00 +0000

It’s February, so open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act is over. We’re getting the first glimpses of how sign-ups are shaking out after the expiration of enhanced subsidies that helped most people with their premium costs.

While more Americans enrolled than , the number was what it was at the same time last year. And experts say it will be months until the numbers are final. The timing will depend on how many of those people who signed up for coverage actually pay their premiums and remain enrolled.

In coming weeks, “consumers may find they really can’t afford the premiums and cancel their plans, while carriers may also cancel coverage for nonpayment,” said Pat Kelly, executive director of Your Health Idaho, a state-based ACA marketplace, during a Jan. 22 call with reporters.

The drop comes after several years of record-breaking enrollment, with 24.2 million sign-ups for the 2025 enrollment year. Enrollment growth took off after enhanced subsidies — which lowered the amount most households had to pay out of their own income toward premiums and removed an upper-income cap — went into effect during the Biden administration. Lawmakers, in adopting the enhanced subsidies, set an expiration date of Dec. 31, 2025.

Congressional debate over extending those more generous subsidies was heated, even . Now, the subsidies are back to their original level, and people who earn more than four times the federal poverty rate (about $62,600 for an individual or $84,600 for a couple) can’t qualify for any at all.

in most states this year, with the biggest drop in North Carolina, where sign-ups fell by nearly 22%, .

In a few places — including New Mexico, Texas, and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia — the number of people selecting ACA plans increased.

The jump was largest in New Mexico, with its tally of people selecting plans up by nearly 18%. Increases were in the single digits in the other states and Washington, D.C.

New Mexico — uniquely — used its own tax dollars to fully offset the loss of the more generous federal tax subsidies for all consumers. , including California, Colorado, Maryland, and Washington, used state money to help some enrollees.

We’ll keep watching to see how this unfolds over the coming weeks.

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Trump Team’s Planned ACA Rule Offers Its Answer to Rising Premium Costs: Catastrophic Coverage

Julie Appleby — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The Trump administration has unveiled a that would substantially change health plan offerings on the Affordable Care Act marketplace next year, aiming, it says, to provide more choice and lower premiums. But it also proposes sharply raising some annual out-of-pocket costs — to more than $27,000 for one type of coverage — and people to drop insurance.

The changes come as affordability is a key concern for many Americans, some of whom are struggling to pay their ACA premiums since enhanced subsidies expired at the end of last year. Initial enrollment numbers for this year fell by more than 1 million.

Health care coverage and affordability have in the run-up to November’s midterm elections.

The proposed changes are part of a lengthy rule that addresses a broad swath of standards, including benefit packages, out-of-pocket costs, and health care provider networks. Insurers refer to these standards when setting premium rates for the coming year.

After a comment period, the rule will be finalized this spring.

It “puts patients, taxpayers, and states first by lowering costs and reinforcing accountability for taxpayer dollars,” said Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz .

One way it would do so focuses heavily on a type of coverage — — that last year attracted only about 20,000 policyholders, , although put it closer to 54,000.

“To me, this proposal reads like the administration has found their next big thing in the catastrophic plans,” said Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Such plans have very high annual out-of-pocket costs for the policyholder but often lower premiums than other ACA coverage options. Formerly restricted to those under age 30 or facing certain hardships, the Trump administration allowed older people who lost subsidy eligibility to enroll in them for this year. It is not yet known how many people chose to do so.

The payment rule cements this move by making eligible anyone whose income is below the poverty line ($15,650 for this year) and those earning more than 2.5 times that amount who lost access to an ACA subsidy that lowered their out-of-pocket costs. It also notes that a person meeting these standards would be eligible in any state — an important point because this coverage is in only 36 states and the District of Columbia.

In addition, the proposal would require out-of-pocket maximums on such plans to hit $15,600 a year for an individual and $27,600 for a family, Health Affairs. (The current out-of-pocket max for catastrophic plans is $10,600 for an individual plan and $21,200 for family coverage.) Not counting preventive care and three covered primary care doctor visits, that spending target must be met before a policy’s other coverage kicks in.

In the rule, the administration wrote that the proposed changes would help differentiate catastrophic from “bronze” plans, the next level up, and, possibly, spur more enrollment in the former. Currently, the proposal said, there may not be a significant difference if premiums are similar. Raising the out-of-pocket maximum for catastrophic plans to those levels would create that difference, the proposal said.

“When there is such a clear difference, the healthier consumers that are generally eligible and best suited to enroll in catastrophic plans are more motivated to select a catastrophic plan in lieu of a bronze plan,” the proposal noted.

However, ACA subsidies cannot be used toward catastrophic premiums, which could limit shoppers’ interest.

Enrollment in bronze plans, which currently have an average annual deductible of $7,500, has doubled since 2018 to about 5.4 million last year. This year, that number will likely be higher. Some states’ sign-up data indicates a shift toward bronze as consumers left higher-premium “silver,” “gold,” or “platinum” plans following the expiration of more generous subsidies at the end of last year.

The proposal also would allow insurers to offer bronze plans with cost-sharing rates that exceed what the ACA law currently allows, but only if that insurer also sells other bronze plans with lower cost-sharing levels.

In what it calls a “novel” approach, the proposal would allow insurers to offer multiyear catastrophic plans, in which people could stay enrolled for up to 10 years, and their out-of-pocket maximums would vary over that time. Costs might be higher, for example, in the early years, then fall the longer the policy is in place. The proposal specifically asks for comments on how such a plan could be structured and what effect multiyear plans might have on the overall market.

“As we understand it thus far, insurers could offer the policy for one year or for consecutive years, up to 10 years,” said Zach Sherman, managing director for coverage policy and program design at HMA, also known as Health Management Associates, a health policy consulting firm that does work for states and insurance plans. “But the details on how that would work, we are still unpacking.”

Matthew Fiedler, senior fellow with the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution, said the proposed rule included a lot of provisions that could “expose enrollees to much higher out-of-pocket costs.”

In addition to the planned changes to bronze and catastrophic plans, he points to another provision that would allow plans to be sold on the ACA exchange that have no set health care provider networks. In other words, the insurer has not contracted with specific doctors and hospitals to accept their coverage. Instead, such plans would pay medical providers a set amount toward medical services, possibly a flat fee or a percentage of what Medicare pays, for example. The rule says insurers would need to ensure “access to a range of providers” willing to accept such amounts as payment in full. Policyholders might be on the hook for unexpected expenses, however, if a clinician or facility doesn’t agree and charges the patient the difference.

Because the rule is so sweeping — with many other parts — it is expected to draw hundreds, if not thousands, of comments between now and early March.

Pennsylvania insurance broker Joshua Brooker said one change he would like to see is requiring insurers that sell the very high out-of-pocket catastrophic plans to offer other catastrophic plans with lower annual maximums.

Overall, though, a wider range of options might appeal to people on both ends of the income scale, he said.

Some wealthier enrollees, especially those who no longer qualify for any ACA premium subsidies, would prefer a lower premium like those expected in catastrophic plans, and could just pay the bills up to that max, he said.

“They’re more worried about the half-million-dollar heart attack,” Brooker said. It’s tougher for people below the poverty level, who don’t qualify for ACA subsidies and, in . So they’re likely to go uninsured. At least a catastrophic plan, he said, might let them get some preventive care coverage and cap their exposure if they end up in a hospital. From there, they might qualify for charity care at the hospital to cover out-of-pocket costs.

Overall, “putting more options on the market doesn’t hurt, as long as it is disclosed properly and the consumer understands it,” he said.

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Obamacare Sign-Ups Drop, but the Extent Won’t Be Clear for Months

Julie Appleby — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

More Americans than expected enrolled in Affordable Care Act health insurance plans for this year, after premium subsidies were dramatically cut — but it remains to be seen whether they’ll keep the coverage as their costs mount.

It’s all part of a drama that roiled the ACA’s 2026 open enrollment period. Congressional debate over whether to extend more generous subsidies made available under the Biden administration led to and focused public attention on rising health care costs and the affordability issue.

The enhanced subsidies, which expanded eligibility both by lowering the percentage of household income people had to pay toward their care and removing an income cap, expired at the end of last year. As a result, just about everyone buying ACA coverage saw their costs increase. For some, what they paid toward premiums doubled or more, even though less generous subsidies remain in place.

Many experts expected ACA enrollment, which hit a record 24 million in 2025, to fall this time around.

“If you raise the price of something a whole lot, economics tell us that a lot of people will buy less of it or not buy at all,” said Katherine Hempstead, a senior policy officer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Here are things to watch now:

Initial Numbers Aren’t Final

The in December 2024 that not extending the enhanced subsidies would cause 2.2 million people to lose insurance in 2026, with further increases in following years. Analysts with the Wakely Consulting Group would opt out of insurance for this year.

Data released Jan. 28 by federal officials showed a year-over-year enrollments across the federal healthcare.gov marketplace and those run by states. Overall, there were 23 million enrollees, including 3.4 million new to ACA coverage.

At about the same time last year, there were , with 3.9 million new to the marketplaces.

But there’s more to it than those initial numbers.

For one thing, both years’ data was pegged to Jan. 15 for the federal marketplace, which closed its open enrollment period that day. But, the data for the states that run their own marketplaces included sign-ups in most cases only through Jan. 10 or 11, even though some held open enrollment until the . Thus, the numbers don’t reflect what might have happened in those last days. Was there a surge in state sign-ups? Or, conversely, did the marketplaces see more enrollees cancel their coverage?

Additionally, those initial numbers are a mix of newly minted ACA enrollees and existing customers, many of whom were auto-reenrolled for 2026 — which raises other issues.

For existing, reenrolled policyholders, the real figures won’t be known for weeks or months, when it becomes clear how many actually pay their premiums. Some consumers may not have focused on their reenrollment costs or may have hoped Congress would extend the subsidies.

That’s an important factor to keep in mind because the CBO and Wakely estimates of millions losing insurance were based on projections for full-year coverage, not initial sign-ups.

In the coming weeks, “consumers may find they really can’t afford the premiums and cancel their plans, while carriers may also cancel coverage for nonpayment,” said Pat Kelly, executive director of Your Health Idaho, a state-based ACA marketplace, during a Jan. 22 call with reporters.

Sharp Differences in State Enrollment Patterns

Changes are also afoot in the 19 other states (and the District of Columbia) that , some of which have issued more detailed data about enrollment than the federal marketplace.

Most states saw lower enrollment for 2026 than the prior year, with the biggest drop in North Carolina, where sign-ups fell by nearly 22%, federal data shows.

In a few states — including New Mexico, Texas, California, and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia — the number of people selecting ACA plans increased.

The jump was largest in New Mexico, with its initial number of people selecting plans up by nearly 14%. Increases were in the single digits in the other states and Washington, D.C.

The , a collective of 22 state marketplaces supported by the National Academy for State Health Policy, said initial enrollment figures . Compared with the same time last year, outright plan cancellations are up 83% in Colorado, disenrollments are four times what they were in Idaho, and Virginia has seen cancellations double.

New enrollments are from the same period last year, according to data from the state. In Pennsylvania, people ages 55 to 64, the group with the highest premiums, and young people 26 to 34 in higher numbers than other age groups, state data shows.

“We have drastically higher rates of people dropping their coverage,” said Devon Trolley, executive director of the Pennsylvania Health Insurance Exchange Authority. “We had 70,000 drop in the last two months, from early retirees to small-business owners to farmers not knowing how to make ends meet.”

On Feb. 9, Pennsylvania released , showing enrollment dropped by about 2% from last year, although that figure masks some of the effects. The state says nearly 18% of enrollees dropped coverage altogether, with older and rural residents being the most likely to fall out.

Some Republicans credited Trump-administration-backed anti-fraud measures, which included a range of , for tightening the system. Although some of those actions were paused by a federal court and have not taken effect, those ACA critics, some of whom have produced that millions may have been improperly enrolled, say that’s behind the decline. They have previously for unauthorized enrollments or ACA plan-switching by commission-seeking brokers.

States that run their own ACA marketplaces, however, reported little or no such unauthorized switching. Relative to the federal marketplace, the state-based ACA platforms employ additional safeguards to prevent brokers from accessing consumers’ coverage without authorization.

Among consumers not returning to the marketplace, the main reason is cost, said Mila Kofman, executive director of the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority, which runs the district’s ACA marketplace.

“When we looked at who these folks are, half are small-business owners,” Kofman said. “They are not folks committing fraud.”

Lower Premiums, Higher Deductibles

Rather than sticking with automatic reenrollment, existing customers in many states shifted sharply into lower-priced “bronze” plans that come with higher deductibles than silver, gold, and platinum plans.

California saw 73% of renewing members who switched plans move to a bronze plan, up from 27% at the same time last year, the State Marketplace Network reported. In Maine, bronze enrollment now represents almost 60% of all plans purchased.

People are “looking at what works in their monthly budget, looking for that lower premium,” said Stacey Pogue, a senior research fellow at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “Some might be crossing their fingers that they won’t need to meet their deductible.”

On average, bronze plans have an . All ACA plans are required to cover certain preventive services — such as some vaccinations, cancer screenings, and other tests — without a copayment or deductible, but most everything else is covered only after an annual deductible is met.

High deductibles can lead some patients to avoid seeking medical care, Hempstead said.

“People are terrified to use their care,” she said. “They may delay something until it’s more serious.”

She added that medical providers, including hospitals and doctors, are bracing for an increase in the number of insured patients who can’t afford to pay their deductibles.

“Everyone is anticipating that hospitals will have to give out more charity care, which will hurt their bottom lines and might lead them to have to lay off people or close or reduce services,” she said.

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State Exchange Directors Seeing Consumers’ Fears — In Real Time — About Obamacare Premium Hikes

Julie Appleby — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:30:00 +0000

I’ve been checking on the progress of the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment season, which is happening as Congress continues to debate whether to extend the subsidies that have given consumers extra help paying their health insurance premiums.

The story drew responses from readers facing large cost increases if these enhanced subsidies expire. They wrote about trying to find ways to squeeze hundreds of dollars a month out of family budgets, or even facing the possibility of going uninsured — and thus not being able to continue cancer or arthritis treatment. A few said they were waiting to see whether Congress would act, while others were enrolling but choosing less expensive plans with higher annual deductibles.

Those cost increases could have serious political repercussions.

According to a released this month, about half of current enrollees who are registered to vote said that if their overall health care expenses — copays, deductibles, and premiums — increased by $1,000 next year, it would have a “major impact” on whether they vote in next year’s midterm elections or which party’s candidate they will support.

As for enrollment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Dec. 5 released early figures showing 949,450 new sign-ups — people who did not have existing ACA coverage — across the federal and state marketplaces. That’s down a bit from approximately the same period last year, when there were 987,869 new enrollees. But CMS showed an increase in returning customers who had already selected a plan for next year, with the number up by more than 400,000 from the same time in 2024.

Jessica Altman, executive director of California’s insurance marketplace, and Audrey Morse Gasteier, executive director of the exchange in Massachusetts, both said it’s too early to tell how final tallies will compare with 2025’s record 24 million sign-ups nationally.

California reported a 33% drop in new enrollments through Dec. 6. And Altman said more people are opting for “bronze”-level plans, which have lower premium payments than most other ACA plans but higher deductibles.

Both state exchange directors said they are hearing from scared consumers.

“Our call centers are getting heartbreaking phone calls from people about how they can’t understand how they can possibly remain in coverage,” Gasteier said.

If Congress does act, even in January, the states say they can update their websites to reflect changes, but those updates could take a week or two. In the meantime, people who sign up for coverage would pay their premiums based on the originally programmed information, which assumed the subsidies would expire at the end of the year.

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