Obama Care - The Unaffordable Care Act

Obamacare exchanges face insurer exodus and enrollment drop as enhanced subsidies expire

Cigna announced in late April that it will abandon the Affordable Care Act exchanges in 2027. CVS' Aetna has already stopped offering plans. And a consulting firm projects marketplace enrollment could fall by as much as 26 percent this year.

Fifteen years after its passage, the signature healthcare law of the Obama era is shedding insurers, enrollees, and any pretense that massive federal subsidies built something durable.

The proximate cause is straightforward: Congress refused to renew the enhanced premium tax credits that had propped up enrollment since the COVID era. Without that extra taxpayer money flowing to insurers, the economics of the exchanges are reverting to a harsher reality, one that major carriers apparently want no part of.

The numbers tell a grim story for defenders of the law. A KFF survey published in March found that 80 percent of returning ACA Marketplace enrollees said their 2026 premiums, deductibles, or cost-sharing are higher than last year.

More than half, 51 percent, said costs are now "a lot higher." The Wakely Consulting Group projects marketplace coverage may plummet by up to 26 percent in 2026 compared to average enrollment in 2025, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

The subsidy spigot did more than inflate costs. It attracted fraud on a massive scale. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in October 2025 that 2.3 million marketplace enrollees improperly claimed the premium tax credit by intentionally overstating their income that year.

The Affordable Care Act was sold as a permanent fix. What it delivered was a permanent dependency, on subsidies, on mandates, and on the willingness of taxpayers to keep writing checks for a product that cannot sustain itself.

Obama Care