STATEMENT: ACA Open Enrollment is Ending, But Trump and Thune Refuse to Fix Their Health Care Affordability Disaster

Washington D.C. – In most states across the country, this is the last day to enroll in 2026 Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance plans. Hard-working families who’ve held out hope that Trump and Republicans in Congress might stop their devastating premium hikes before the end of open enrollment now face no choice but to stretch their budgets to accommodate massive premium increases or forgo health insurance altogether. All the while, Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are sitting on a bipartisan solution that passed the House, has majority support in the Senate, and would end the premium pain for nearly 22 million Americans. 

“Today marks a grim milestone in Trump and his party’s unconscionable war on health care,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach. “Despite the affordability crisis in America, Republicans have done nothing but make health care less affordable for millions of hard-working Americans. Now, they have a clean bill to fix this crisis at their fingertips, but they refuse to pass it. It’s absolutely incomprehensible that Republican leadership is cementing their devastating premium hikes in an election year, against repeated warnings from rank-and-file members and voters across the country. This decision won’t just cost the GOP votes. It will cost the lives of hard-working Americans left to fend for themselves by a Republican power trifecta that puts billionaires and big corporations before everyday people every single time.”

Background: 

Republicans have implemented their plans to strip working Americans of their health care and raise costs for everyone. For the past 16 years, Republicans have waged a war on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with the express goal of kicking Americans off their health plans. Now, as they’ve implemented their draconian cuts on health care, Americans are seeing the fruits of the GOP’s efforts; 1.4 million fewer Americans are covered on the ACA marketplaces, a number that will keep climbing as more people realize they can’t afford the care they need. This is a disaster in the making, and a disaster planned and implemented by Republicans.

This open enrollment, GOP premium hikes:

• Put health care out of reach for 1.4 million Americans compared to the end of open enrollment last year, all to give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations.
• Doubled and tripled premiums for over 20 million hardworking Americans, including small business owners, farmers, and older adults.
• Forced middle-class families to pay $20 billion in higher health care costs in 2026, while CEOs and yacht owners pocket $120 billion in tax breaks from the GOP tax scam in 2026.
• Forced an estimated one in three Americans who buy health care on their own to reduce their coverage and pay thousands more each year in health care costs.
• Pressured countless families to cut back on food, clothing, and other basics to afford health insurance and greater out-of-pocket costs.

This spring, the full scale of the Trump-GOP premium disaster will become clear as:

• Families are forced to choose between groceries and paying their premiums and realize they can no longer afford health care if they want to keep food on the table.
• Millions of Americans who were auto–reenrolled are kicked off their coverage when they get health care bills two to three times higher and cannot afford to pay them.
• Huge declines in effectuated enrollment are reported after families are unable to stretch their budgets to cover both GOP health care hikes and the cost of Trump tariffs.

Sources: CMS 2025 Open Enrollment Period Report and CMS 2026 Open Enrollment Period Report