SGATalks
Administrator
27 messages
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1 month ago
#1
If you buy health insurance through Georgia Access, you may want to brace yourself for another round of increases.
Insurers are proposing ACA premium increases of as much as 20% or more for 2027, affecting a marketplace that currently covers about 900,000 Georgians. These increases would come right behind the big jump many people experienced for 2026 after the pandemic-era enhanced federal subsidies expired.
Georgia has already seen about 350,000 people leave ACA coverage between spring 2025 and spring 2026. And that's where this potentially becomes a vicious cycle: healthier people are generally the ones most able to gamble on going without insurance. As they leave, the remaining pool becomes more expensive to insure, premiums rise again, and even more people decide they can't afford coverage.
Georgia has an additional complication because the state hasn't fully expanded Medicaid, meaning many lower-income residents who might qualify for Medicaid elsewhere instead depend on Georgia Access.
The proposed rates aren't final and could change before open enrollment begins November 1. Subsidies will also determine what people actually pay rather than the sticker price of a policy.
But after two consecutive years of substantial increases, the bigger question may be: At what point does health insurance become so expensive that enough healthy people simply walk away from it and make the entire problem worse?
Source: ACA premium prices insuring 900K Georgians to shoot up – again
Insurers are proposing ACA premium increases of as much as 20% or more for 2027, affecting a marketplace that currently covers about 900,000 Georgians. These increases would come right behind the big jump many people experienced for 2026 after the pandemic-era enhanced federal subsidies expired.
Georgia has already seen about 350,000 people leave ACA coverage between spring 2025 and spring 2026. And that's where this potentially becomes a vicious cycle: healthier people are generally the ones most able to gamble on going without insurance. As they leave, the remaining pool becomes more expensive to insure, premiums rise again, and even more people decide they can't afford coverage.
Georgia has an additional complication because the state hasn't fully expanded Medicaid, meaning many lower-income residents who might qualify for Medicaid elsewhere instead depend on Georgia Access.
The proposed rates aren't final and could change before open enrollment begins November 1. Subsidies will also determine what people actually pay rather than the sticker price of a policy.
But after two consecutive years of substantial increases, the bigger question may be: At what point does health insurance become so expensive that enough healthy people simply walk away from it and make the entire problem worse?
Source: ACA premium prices insuring 900K Georgians to shoot up – again