Policy Pressures, Rising Costs, Rate Hikes: Sizing Up the 2026 ACA Market

Jul 17
Jul 17, 2025

With states now starting to reveal the rates that insurers have requested for their Affordable Care Act exchange plans, a portrait of what the market could look like next year — amid significant policy and financial headwinds — is coming into focus.

“Right now, it’s going to be much more expensive” to buy coverage on the ACA marketplace next year, says David Anderson, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina who has studied the ACA exchanges since their inception. And health insurers will be feeling pain, too, he predicts.
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Leslie Small

Leslie has been working in journalism since 2009 and reporting on the health care industry since 2014. She has covered the many ups and downs of the Affordable Care Act exchanges, the failed health insurer mega-mergers, and hundreds of other storylines spanning subjects such as Medicaid managed care, Medicare Advantage, employer-sponsored insurance, and prescription drug coverage. As the managing editor of Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits, she writes and edits for both publications while overseeing a small team of reporters who also focus on the managed care sector. Before joining AIS Health, she was a senior editor for the e-newsletter Fierce Health Payer, and she started her career as a copy editor at multiple local newspapers. She graduated with a dual degree in journalism and political science from Penn State University.