California wraps up 2026 Open Enrollment w/1.93M plan selections, down 2.6%...& avg. premiums are up 35% even w/state subsidies

via Covered California's Open Enrollment Dashboard, as of January 31st (which was also the final 2026 OEP deadline):

• New enrollments: 235,055
• Active renewals: 538,476
• Autorenewals: 1,153,840
• Total: 1,927,371

The final tally last year (via the official 2025 OEP Public Use File, not the Covered CA dashboard):

• New enrollments: 345,711
• Active renewals: 433,022
• Autorenewals: 1,200,771
• Total: 1,979,504

Overall, that means...

• New enrollments are down 32% y/y
• Active renewals are up 24% y/y
• Autorenewals are down 3.9% y/y
• Overall enrollments are down 2.6% y/y

It's important to keep in mind that California is backfilling 100% of the lost federal tax credits for enrollees who earn less than 150% FPL, plus some nominal supplemental help for those who earn 150 - 165% FPL.

Here's the breakout of NET premiums by income bracket (the final PUF numbers will look slightly different):

The ~289,000 enrollees who earn < 150% FPL are actually seeing a net reduction in their monthly premiums thanks to the state backfilling the lost federal tax credits.

However, the other 1.64 million enrollees are looking at average net premium hikes ranging from 9% for those who weren't receiving tax credits to begin with to a whopping 82% for 111,000 enrollees in the 400 - 600% FPL income bracket.

Overall, net premiums are going up 35% for CoveredCA enrollees so far, and if you don't include the < 150% FPL category, they're going up an average of 44%.

In terms of year over year enrollment by income bracket, enrollment for the < 150% bracket is up 8.6% from a year ago thanks to the state backfilling the lost tax credits, but it's dropped a whopping 29% y/y for the 400 - 600% FPL crowd for obvious reasons.

Note: The 2025 data for this table is from the CoveredCA dashboard since the final OEP PUF income brackets are broken out differently:

There was also a very clear case of enrollees "buying down" (trying to mitigate the massive premium hikes by downgrading to a less comprehensive plan with higher deductibles & out of pocket expenses). Enrollment in Bronze & Catastrophic plans went up a combined 23%, while enrollment in Silver, Gold & Platinum plans dropped by over 10% in each category.

Normally having this sort of granular data for California would good for extrapolating out to the rest of the country (CA holds around 8.5% of all ACA exchange enrollments nationally), but the fact that they're fully backfilling the lost tax credits for everyone under 150% FPL muddies things.

This is further complicated by the fact that only around 15% of CA enrollees earn less than 150% FPL, vs. a whopping 47% of the total exchange population nationally. In fact, it jumps to almost exactly 50% if you disregard California entirely.

Unfortunately, this means that I'll have to wait until the official 2026 OEP Public Use File comes out (likely in late April/early May) to run most of the demographic analysis for the country at large.

As an aside, it's also worth noting that those state subsidies for the < 150% crowd came at a price: Most of the funds for it actually came from an existing program which wiped out subsidies for most enrollees the past few years, which means that in 2026...

• enrollees earning up to 150% FPL will still be eligible for $0-premium plans...but will face a modest $75 deductible

• enrollees earning 150 - 165% FPL will receive at least some extra premium assistance...but will go back to an $800 deductible ($1,600 for families)

• enrollees earning 165% - 200% FPL will go back to an $800 deductible ($1,600 for families), plus the other premium hikes

• enrollees earning 200 - 250% FPL will go back to a $5,400 deductible ($10,800 for famlies), plus the other premium hikes

In other words, over 800,000 enrollees just got hit with between $800 - $10,800 more in out of pocket costs than they had last year on top of the 50% avg. premium hikes.