Are Your Health Insurance Costs About to Skyrocket?

Georgia residents could see as much as a 40% increase in their health insurance premiums if Congress does not act to extend the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said at a press conference Thursday.

Ossoff, a Democrat, said he is urging congressional Republicans to “reverse course” on allowing the credits — which help subsidize ACA health care premiums for low-income and middle class families — to expire. Currently, families with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty line are eligible for the credits, which comes out to $62,600 for a single-person household and $128,600 for a household of four.

Without the credits, Ossoff warned, health care costs are expected to rise dramatically, forcing families to pay more out of pocket or forgo health insurance coverage entirely.

“When folks can’t make their household finances work already with rent or the mortgage and the car payment and gas and groceries, the last thing Georgia families need right now is to be paying thousands of dollars more per year for their health insurance,” Ossoff said.

Roughly 310,000 people across Georgia are projected to lose access to health insurance by 2034 under the GOP’s budget reconciliation bill, often referred to by supporters as the “big, beautiful bill,” which was signed into law by President Donald Trump in July. If Congress allows enhanced tax credits for those insured through the Affordable Care Act to expire this year, that number could rise to 750,000, according to data from the nonprofit health policy research organization KFF.

The credits were first introduced in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and are associated with record high ACA enrollment levels. In Georgia, 96% of enrollees use advanced premium tax credits to cover some or all of their health care costs. Georgia’s state insurance marketplace, known as Georgia Access, is the second-largest in the country after California.

“The enhanced premium tax credits have allowed Georgia Access to be so successful, and they have allowed hundreds of thousands of Georgians to get coverage for the first time,” said Whitney Griggs, the director of health policy at Georgians for a Healthy Future, a patient advocacy group.

Other organizations that advocate for health care access joined Ossoff in his push to renew the credits.

“This is going to affect a lot of people,” said Lloyd Sirmons, the executive director of the Georgia Rural Health Association. “It’s going to affect your elderly people who are going to see their premiums go up drastically. It’s going to affect your small business owners and their workers, because their premiums are going to go up.”

“At the end of the day, that’s the thing that really kind of resonates with me most is when people have to start deciding if they’re going to be able to pay for the health care, or if they’re going to be able to pay for their food,” Sirmons added.

Ossoff said that Congress could advance legislation to extend the credits as soon as their first week back in session. Both chambers will return from their August recess after Labor Day.