Denver, Colo. – After five consecutive years of record growth, enrollment in health coverage through the state’s official health insurance marketplace for plan year 2026 dipped 2%, Connect for Health Colorado announced today.
Despite rising costs due to less federal financial assistance, 277,228 Coloradans enrolled in health insurance, with 69% of customers receiving financial help to lower the cost of their monthly premiums.
Technically, QHP selections ended up down 1.9% from last year's total of 282,481.
104,286 Nevadans Enrolled in Health Insurance During 2026 Plan Year Open Enrollment
More Nevadans actively engaged in their health coverage this year, with 10% enrolled in the new public option, known as the Battle Born State Plans
CARSON CITY, Nev. – Nevada Health Link’s Open Enrollment Period for Plan Year 2026 concluded on January 15 with 104,286 Nevadans enrolling in comprehensive health coverage through the state-based marketplace, including the new Battle Born State Plans, which accounted for 10% of total enrollments. Of the 104,286, there were 63,563 Nevadans who actively shopped, showing a 32% increase in engagement of active enrollments from last year’s Open Enrollment.
Awhile back I reported that Access Health CT, Connecticut's ACA exchange, was planning on joining several other states including California, Colorado, Maryland, New Jersey & New Mexico in offering supplemental subsidies to partially (or, in the case of New Mexico, fully) backfill the lost federal tax credits for ACA enrollees, as well as extending the final Open Enrollment deadline for February coverage through the end of January.
...The state subsidies will fully fund the expired enhanced premium tax credit amounts for consumers with incomes between 100-200% of the federal poverty level and who are not enrolled in the Covered CT program.
...I'm bringing all of this back up again today because I strongly suspect that the situation is about to reverse itself, with the Trump Administration already preparing to brag about impressive-sounding ACA enrollment numbers for 2026 in spite of the enhanced tax credits expiring less than 60 hours from now...even though the actual negative impact of the expiring tax credits (along with several other administrative policy changes made by CMS this year)likely won't be known for several months after Open Enrollment officially ends in January.
Last night, the 2026 ACA Open Enrollment Period (OEP) concluded across most states, including New Mexico (there are 10 other states with later deadlines).
BeWell NM, New Mexico's ACA exchange, is among the only ACA exchanges with ongoing daily enrollment data reports, last updated early this morning. Here's how they wrapped things up compared to the 2025 OEP (barring any clerical corrections in this year's data):
Overall enrollment in the Land of Enchantment is up a whopping 17%!
My son was in the 4th grade when Donald Trump first claimed to have a "much better" healthcare plan than "Obamacare" which would "cover everbody" and "save so much money."
I'm mostly gonna base this on the "more detailed" explainer but I do have to address this nonsense claim in the initial press release:
CLAIM:
“Your prescription drugs will come way, way down and, under this policy, the prices of many drugs will be slashed by 300, 400 even 500% starting this month at the Trumprx.gov.”
This is very helpful for data hounds like myself, and I'll be consulting it regularly in the future.
In addition to displaying the latest enrollment data by various criteria, the MA dashboard also provides data from prior weeks, which means I can look for trend lines:
Total QHPs (ConnectorCare + Std. QHPs combined):
12/14/25: 361,541
12/21/25: 361,192
12/28/25: 371,453
01/04/26: 368,436
01/11/26: 372,971
What's noteworthy about this is that yesterday's CMS report had Massachusetts down as having 382,580 QHP selections total as of 12/27/25...which is over 11,000 higher than what the MA Connector had it at as of a day later.
Back in September I ran an analysis of the ~24 million Americans enrolled in ACA exchange healthcare coverage to try and get a better idea of the partisan impact of the expiration of the enhanced tax credits.
While it was already common knowledge that red states have significantly more ACA enrollees than blue ones (mainly because 9 of the 10 states still refusing to expand Medicaid under the ACA are red ones), I wanted to take a more granular look, so I broke enrollment out at the Congressional District level instead, and determined that while there are definitely more people in red districts who were about to be hit with massive net premium hikes, it wasn't a massive gap...it was around 20% higher in districts won by Republicans than by Democrats, which is significant but not jaw-dropping.
[GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio] said his goal is to get roughly 35 of the Senate’s 53 GOP senators to support an eventual deal — not just a handful joining Democrats on a “defection vote” — and that he’s keeping the White House and Senate leaders closely apprised of the discussions.
...His involvement is also a sign that a new generation of bipartisan dealmakers might be starting to emerge after some of the Senate’s old hands headed for the exits in recent cycles. Moreno is now in close touch with not only Collins and Shaheen but other Senate pragmatists such as Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Angus King (I-Maine).
...The Senate group’s proposed extension would include new restrictions including a $5 a month minimum premium payment and an income cap set at 700 percent of the federal poverty level. In the second year, the proposal would also give enrollees to take their subsidy as cash in pre-funded health savings accounts — an arrangement favored by Trump.
