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Millions of Americans are about to get a rude awakening when their health insurance bills hit them in 2026, and Washington’s broken incentives are the reason. Analyses from nonpartisan health researchers show that marketplace enrollees who benefited from the temporary, enhanced premium tax credits face average premium payments more than doubling if those credits expire at the end of this year.
This spike isn’t a mystery — it’s the predictable result of Congress creating an artificial subsidy that made coverage cheap for millions and then scheduling that subsidy to vanish without a plan. The enhanced credits were introduced during the pandemic and extended through 2025, and KFF and other analysts warn that the rollback will leave enrollees on the hook for far higher monthly costs and likely push healthier people off the rolls, driving premiums even higher.
At the same time employers are bracing for the biggest cost surge in years, with major consulting firms projecting big jumps in 2026 employer health benefit costs. Aon and other industry surveys put employer cost increases this coming year in the high single digits to nearly double digits, driven by rising drug prices, more utilization, and expensive new treatments that the market is paying for.
Predictably, the political class is scrambling. Democrats are pushing to extend the enhanced credits as part of budget negotiations, while many Republicans rightly object to tacking another expensive entitlement onto the federal balance sheet without real reforms — and swing-district lawmakers are feeling the heat from constituents who don’t want their premiums to explode overnight. This has turned health care into a political bargaining chip instead of a serious policy discussion.
Let’s be clear: Washington created this mess. Permanent dependency on subsidies and endless spending binges have replaced sound policy, and now taxpayers face a long-term bill for short-term politics. Conservatives should oppose wasteful extensions that simply paper over the problem and instead demand reforms that restore patient choice, fiscal responsibility, and competitiveness to the system.
Real solutions exist and they’re not ideological fantasies. We should expand Health Savings Accounts and make them truly portable, allow insurance to be sold across state lines to lower costs through competition, require price transparency so families can shop intelligently, and enact commonsense tort reform to reduce defensive medicine. Those market-based steps will actually lower costs without adding trillions to the federal debt.
If conservatives fail to turn this moment into a policy fight rather than a bailout, hardworking Americans will pay the price in higher premiums, smaller raises, and fewer job opportunities. Lawmakers on both sides need to stop the theater and get to work: protect patients, restrain government giveaways, and put American families back in charge of their health care.
