Thursday, October 1, 2026
A quarter million Washingtonians, who get their insurance through the state’s exchange under the Affordable Care Act, face another year of double-digit rate increases.
Health insurance rates will rise an average of 22.2 percent starting on Jan. 1, Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer announced Wednesday, Sept. 9. This comes after thousands dropped coverage due to the expiration of federal tax credits, the debate over which led to a lengthy government shutdown last fall.
This insurance option is meant for people not covered through their work or government programs like Medicaid or Medicare, like people who are self-employed or retired early. Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees also use the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, for their workers. About 250,000 people are enrolled this year in the exchange.
Thirteen insurers had requested an average 22.4 percent rate hike for 2027, which Kuderer is required to approve if the increase is actuarially justified. Premiums rose 21 percent this year, partly due to the end of the tax credits, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2027 hike is mainly due to rising costs of health care and enrollees’ more robust needs, Kuderer said.
“This is, unfortunately, a reflection of the increasing cost of care,” Kuderer said in a statement. “Families shouldn’t experience sticker shock every year when shopping for health insurance, but these pressures are likely to continue without changes that slow health care spending, improve affordability and keep more people covered.”
Insurance companies cited a few reasons for the steep increase. For one, the end of the tax credits makes coverage less affordable, meaning healthier people who need less care dropped their insurance. This raises the costs for people who stay on their health plans.
Other issues leading to the rate hike include health care organizations charging more for services and prescription drugs, and members using more of these services, according to Kuderer’s office.
Jim Freeburg, Executive Director of the Patient Coalition of Washington, said the increases will have “real consequences for the Washington families and small businesses that purchase their coverage through the Exchange.”
“It’s going to cost my wife and I over $36,000 to cover ourselves and our two girls and that’s simply unfair for the coverage we’d get,” said Freeburg in an email.
The rates are used to determine monthly premiums.
On the low end, the 16,000 members on Regence BlueShield plans will see an average 6.7 percent increase. For the more than 40,000 people on Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington it will be around 14.1 percent. Community Health Plan of Washington, with nearly 37,000 enrollees, was approved for a 30.5 percent hike while the 98,000 covered by the Coordinated Care Corporation face a more than 25 percent jump.
The Washington Health Benefit Exchange Board was expected to certify the rates at its Thursday (Sept. 10) meeting. Open enrollment opens Nov. 1, and lasts until Jan. 15.
One other insurer not on the exchange, Asuris Northwest Health, is awaiting an approved rate change for its roughly 800 enrollees in Washington. It requested a 14.9 percent increase.
Enrollment in the exchange this year is down roughly 36,500 from 2025, a nearly 13 percent reduction, the biggest falloff since the marketplace launched in 2013. State officials had feared an even larger dropoff when the tax credits went away.
Rural counties saw some of the steepest declines, but the state’s own premium assistance, known as Cascade Care Savings, helped avert some of the more dire notions of the drops in coverage.
People most likely to drop their coverage were young and lower-income. Many of those people no longer covered could’ve found insurance elsewhere, like joining a family member’s plan or getting employer-sponsored coverage.
Courtesy of Washington State Standard
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CobraCommander
Remember back in 2016 when the Trump administration said they had a replacement for the ACA?
Friday, September 11 Report this
gypsydjango
Absolutely devestating for so many people/families who can barely afford health care now. So they will have to drop their insurance, in order to pay for the basic necessities, and go to emergency care or not. This will in turn increase premiums for those who can still afford their premiums. What a sad sad situation.
Saturday, September 12 Report this
CobraCommander
gypsydjango - worse than that, this will lead to unnecessary death and suffering.
Trump wants nothing more than to keep hurting people.
Saturday, September 12 Report this
Snevets
The Regime in our WH has done nothing for the American people but bring on pain and suffering.
VOTE!
Saturday, September 12 Report this
36098501
There is a critically important point missing from this discussion.
The affordability problem from high rates and large increases did not suddenly appear when the enhanced subsidies expired. The underlying costs had been rising for years. What changed in the early 2020s was that the government substantially increased the subsidies that shielded consumers from seeing the full price—and the full impact of the unintended consequences of the ACA.
The ACA fundamentally changed the individual insurance market through guaranteed issue, community rating, mandated benefits and other requirements. Those decisions came with significant cost consequences.
Then came the extraordinary inflation of 2020–2024, which amplified the problem. Labor, pharmaceuticals, equipment, hospital operations and virtually every other input became more expensive. Overall inflation reached 9.1% in June 2022, its highest rate in four decades.
Rather than forcing the public to confront these rising costs and addressing their underlying causes, Washington dramatically increased ACA premium tax credits beginning in 2021. The American Rescue Plan expanded them, and the Inflation Reduction Act extended those enhanced credits but set them to expire in 2025.
The subsidies did not make healthcare or insurance cheaper. They made the increases less visible to consumers because taxpayers absorbed much more of the cost.
Now those enhanced subsidies have expired, and the accumulated price increases are becoming painfully visible.
What looks like a sudden affordability crisis is actually years of rising costs finally reaching the household balance sheet.
We should be honest about what happened:. Policymakers did not solve the cost problem. They temporarily pushed it forward and obscured it with larger subsidies paid for by taxpayers. That reduced the pain in the short term, but it did nothing to control the underlying steep trajectory of rising healthcare costs.
Now the bill is coming due, and it is coming due all at once.
Sunday, September 13 Report this
MrCommonSense
Well, like they say, this is not rocket science or brain surgery, it's simple math. The more people insured and paying premiums, the bigger pool of money to pay claims and the lower the insurance rates can be. (They will still be too high, but at least affordable for more people)
When folks leave the system, it raised the cost of care because emergency room and urgent care visits rise dramatically. This puts an additional cost burden on EVERY taxpayer. Forcing people off health insurance is a downward spiral. It will also force some rural hospitals to close. OR, heaven forbid, leave patients bleeding out while waiting in line. Sadly, the worst problems will be in rural and poor America where support for the policy-makers causing the problem.
Anyway, Congress just dottles along..... not caring. We need a new Congress that supports sound government policy. Let's hope the vote in November brings change to Washington(DC).
BTW, It will always be Lake Ontario for those of us who love our Canadian neighbors! And shame on Google and Apple Maps for following blindly and pathetically along as they keep "cheek smooching." : )
Sunday, September 13 Report this
CobraCommander
36098501 - "Likely AI-assisted: 70–85%"
You still didn't explain why the trump admin had 10 YEARS to formulate a new plan but decided not to.
Release the Epstein files.
Sunday, September 13 Report this
36098501
CobraCommander - My best guess is that they didn't replace the ACA because they don’t know what they are doing either.
It may take decades, but when an institution becomes too slow, expensive, and politically difficult to reform, maybe the best strategy isn't to reform the institution at all. Maybe it's to build a competing architecture that is more efficient and cost-effective, and gradually makes the established institution less important.
There are some imperfect examples of this idea.
Cost Plus Drugs and traditional pharmacy distribution. Private data centers building dedicated power sources rather than relying entirely on the public grid. SpaceX creating capabilities that historically sat almost entirely within NASA. CLEAR changing part of the airport-security experience rather than trying to reform the TSA. Private security and disaster-response services operating alongside government services. Insurance companies owning their own private firefighters.
None of these are perfect analogies. The point is that sometimes the better way to change a system is to build an alternative rather than trying to fix every component of the existing one.
The regulatory environment, lack of pricing transparency and lack of competition in certain areas (like United Healthcare or limited insurance competition at the State level) don’t seem particularly helpful if the goal is to make healthcare more attainable.
I have no idea what my doctor visit, imaging or surgery is going to cost, or whether there is an alternative that would accomplish the same thing at less cost. And frankly, under the current system, I don't really care.
That's very big problem.
I'm not price-conscious because I generally don't have to be. If my perception is that someone else is paying my bill, my incentives are very different than they would be if I were spending my own money. I suspect I'm not the only person who responds that way.
There are also so many bottlenecks between the patient and the actual delivery of healthcare that I think there is enormous room for improvement.
I'd like to see the link between employment and health insurance broken. I'd also like to separate healthcare from insurance.
Routine, inexpensive care could be paid directly by the patient. Moderately expensive care could involve a deductible and insurance. Truly catastrophic expenses could be covered by insurance. Not great necessarily, but better. This sort of resembles how we approach auto or home insurance, but this would require more complexity that I believe the market could figure out if allowed to.
Currently, we can’t even build a hospital or a mental facility in Olympia without years of bureaucracy.
For people who can't afford this structure, one approach would be for the government to subsidize their premiums rather than having government directly operate, or control, more of the healthcare system than they already do.
I'm not claiming this is a complete solution. It is an idea to discuss. I don't think there is a simple solution to healthcare.
I'd encourage people to look at alternatives for ideas. The Surgery Center of Oklahoma and the Free Market Medical Association provide some interesting examples of alternative ways to think about delivering healthcare.
If you go back and read all my comments on various articles, you'll eventually figure out that I'm just a normal person like you who has lived through all this nonsense. I’m not great with national issues, or national politics but I’m well versed and much more comfortable with local issues.
It also seems like I'm making some progress with you. I think I started out with you describing me as a bot, then entirely AI, and now 70–85% AI.
Progress.
Soon we'll just be respectful commenters who happen to have different opinions on some things.
"Shall we play a game?"
"Love to. How about global thermonuclear war?"
For your transparency, I did have to Google the quote from the movie because I didn’t remember it exactly.
Irony.
Sunday, September 13 Report this
CobraCommander
TLDR: Republicans lied, yet again.
Monday, September 14 Report this
CobraCommander
Name me something that the trump admin promised and accomplished. I'll wait.
Monday, September 14 Report this