Sara Rubin here, thinking about how what happens in the halls of power in Washington, D.C. can sometimes feel far removed from our regular lives and day-to-day reality. Sometimes, however, it feels very close to day-to-day reality.
For the roughly 2 million Californians who have health insurance through Covered California and have been invited to enroll in 2026 plans, it is feeling quite real. The state’s exchange offers subsidized health insurance thanks to the federal legislation known as Obamacare. The open enrollment period started on Nov. 1.
The website portal invites customers to enter their information on age, income and household size and compare plan information with bronze, silver, gold and platinum options. But something is different this year as people click through to shop—and this is where people clicking through a computer screen locally can start to really feel the effects of what is (or isn’t) happening in Washington.
President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” ends federal tax credits intended to keep premiums lower. Democrats in Congress are so far not budging on their demands to restore those tax credits, creating an impasse in negotiations that is keeping the federal government shutdown going. According to various news reports, there was movement on that last night, with a group of eight senators agreeing to leave the Obamacare tax credits on the table for a theoretical future vote.
But meanwhile, Covered California has started enrolling people in plans for 2026 with premiums—that’s the monthly amount you pay to be insured—calculated based on the current situation, not a theoretical future vote. That means premiums are significantly higher than they were in past years.
U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, spoke this morning about spiking premiums in a press conference hosted by the group Protect Our Care, which calculates an average $1,000/month increase in premiums. In her District 18 (which includes the Salinas Valley), a couple earning under $83,000/year would see premiums increase by over $26,000/year, or $2,166/month. “That’s impossible to do,” Lofgren said. “What we know will happen is a lot of people will be choosing between rent, food and health care, and a lot of people will end up uninsured.”
That perpetuates the problem because insurance rates benefit when more people buy insurance plans; the risk pool is bigger and more spread out. And for all sorts of reasons, including economic ones, more people with health insurance is a good thing—preventive care helps many patients avoid more costly interventions down the road.
County of Monterey officials are encouraging people to re-enroll despite the uncertainty and despite the skyrocketing premiums.
Lofgren was about to head back to Washington where the impasse continues, adding that she disagrees with the Democratic senators’ strategy. “We need to keep the pressure on,” she said.
Meanwhile, real people are facing real and potentially impossible choices about what to pay for, and health insurance may be the first to go.