It may only come around once a year, but it is never too early to plan ahead for next year’s health insurance coverage. According to Way Insurance Owner Missie Shepherd, base premiums are expected to increase again on individual plans for those under 65 years of age, making it more important than ever for consumers to review their coverage options during Open Enrollment:
“I expect probably the base premiums are going to go up again. So, I would see another year like last year. We are still not going to have tax credits above 400 percent of federal poverty levels, we are still going to have very high premiums for those folks. Get Covered Illinois has gotten better as we expected,” says Shepherd.
“Keeping up with a lot of the federal changes that are coming down, right now I am a little nervous about 2028 to be honest because folks that are in the ACA Market auto-renew, so if they don’t do anything, their policy cancel, it just renews and they get charged the new premium. Everybody moves on and you don’t have to touch those policies necessarily if everything is working fine, just let it go. In 2028, they are bringing in some regulation to say that there won’t be any auto-renewals, everybody is going to have to go out and touch their application and take care of business,” Shepherd adds.
Shepherd said proposed Open Enrollment dates of Oct. 15 through Dec. 15 are currently under discussion but have not yet been finalized.
