Survey shows 9% of ACA enrollees uninsured after subsidies expired

New data this week showed how many people dropped health insurance this year after Congress let those enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, plans expire.

According to a survey from the health policy nonprofit KFF, 9% of people who had a plan last year are now uninsured. People in their late teens and 20s were twice as likely to drop coverage as those over 50, and most people who did keep their coverage said they’re now paying more.

Buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act is twice as expensive this year as it was last year, on average. For some people, it’s three or four times more expensive.

Even so, KFF director of survey methodology Ashley Kirzinger said most people chose to sign up again.

“What it says to me is that people really value having health insurance,” she said. “And so they're willing to make significant changes to their lifestyle and to their household expenses to be able to afford that coverage.”

More than half of people said they’re cutting back on other things so they can pay their insurance premiums.

“And even though they currently have health insurance, that doesn't mean that they're going to be able to afford their health insurance for the entire year,” Kirzinger said.

One in six people said they’re not sure they will be able to afford to keep paying their premiums.

Loren Adler, associate director at Brookings’ Center on Health Policy, said when people were signing up during open enrollment there was still a possibility that Congress might have extended the subsidies.

”There was probably some folks hoping that the premiums wouldn't go up as much as they ended up going up,” Adler said.

Sabrina Corlette, research professor and co-director at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said others might have figured they’d sign up initially and try to make it work.

“I do think this is going to be sort of like a slow-moving train wreck, in the sense that many people may manage to pay that first month or second month and then start to drop off later in the year,” she said.

Many people are also now paying more for worse coverage. In order to afford the higher premiums, they had to sign up for a lower-value plan with a higher deductible.

“And of course, when you have a deductible that's like $6,000/$7,000 a year, it's effectively being uninsured, because for a lot of folks, it's easier to fly to the moon than pay a $6,000 deductible,” Corlette said.

And if someone can’t pay their deductible, they can’t really use their insurance.