Pennsylvanians still searching for a 2026 health insurance plan are running out of time to secure it through the Affordable Care Act.
Open enrollment on Pennie, the state’s Obamacare marketplace, ends just before midnight Jan. 31. Pennie officials had extended the deadline from an original cutoff of Jan. 15.
The extension gives people extra time to weigh how a sharp reduction in federal financial aid for Affordable Care Act coverage might raise their rates — and whether they can afford to stay insured through the program at all.
More than 82,000 Pennsylvanians have left the program between the start of open enrollment Nov. 1 and Jan. 27, the most recent date for which Pennie has provided data.
Pennie had almost 500,000 enrollees last year — its most ever.
Many more people are anticipated to drop coverage in the next few months as they struggle to pay for the plans they selected.
Losses have been offset, at least in part, by new sign-ups, Pennie says. These are mostly people who lost employer-sponsored coverage or saw their continuation of health coverage (commonly known as COBRA) protection expire.
“We’re basically treading water, but we’re seeing a lot of people losing coverage,” Pennie Executive Director Devon Trolley said at a press conference last week. “If we had not dropped as many people as we had, we could have broken another record.”
The shrunken subsidies come after Congress missed an end-of-year deadline to extend stronger financial aid introduced in 2021. While the discounts could be reestablished, Republican resistance has kept lawmakers in Washington, D.C. from doing so.
People making less than four times the federal poverty level — about $62,000 for a single adult — are still eligible for subsidies established in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. This assistance, however, is less than what had been in place between 2021 and 2025.
Anyone over that threshold must now fully pay their own way. Previously, the subsidies ensured no one put more than 8.5% of their income toward premiums.
The average Pennie enrollee is expected to see their premiums increase by 102% if they stick with the same plan.
The agency does not provide health insurance. Rather, it’s a central platform where people can browse Affordable Care Act-compliant plans from UPMC, Highmark and other insurers.
Additional information on the exchange is available at Pennie.com.
