Obamacare Enrollment Plunges 3M After Subsidy Expire
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- Ohio and Oklahoma each lost nearly a third of their Obamacare enrollment since last year, according to state-by-state federal CMS data first reported by the Associated Press.
- National enrollment fell by about 3 million people, or roughly 13%, per a Department of Health and Human Services report, with Arizona, South Carolina, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, and Louisiana also posting deep losses.
- The HHS report attributed the drop-off to improper or fraudulent sign-ups by 'phantom enrollees,' but health policy experts have countered that large numbers of people simply failed to pay their first ACA premium after subsidies expired.
- The pandemic-era enhanced subsidies, passed by Democrats in 2021, had overwhelmingly benefited red states—especially those that haven't expanded Medicaid—meaning the losses are hitting both red and blue states alike.
- Congress let the enhanced subsidies expire, and the political question now is whether Republican midterm candidates will address the coverage losses or stay silent while Democrats make them a campaign issue.
Why it matters: Roughly 3 million Americans lost ACA coverage after Congress allowed enhanced pandemic-era subsidies to lapse, and the hardest-hit states (Ohio, Oklahoma, Arizona, South Carolina, Minnesota) are a politically inconvenient mix of red and blue. The HHS's 'phantom enrollees' fraud framing is directly disputed by health policy experts who blame unaffordable premiums—giving Republican midterm candidates a volatile pocket of newly uninsured voters in states that benefited most from the subsidies.
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