Americans are struggling to afford higher healthcare insurance premiums after President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans failed to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies last year. Economic analyst Steve Rattner dove into the data on “Morning Joe” to show the devastating consequences of that decision, as millions of Americans have reportedly dropped their coverage due to rising costs.
According to a new report on 2026 enrollment, the average premium for someone who bought their insurance through the ACA marketplace is up 58% compared to last year.
“That’s not even shared equally,” Rattner said. “Different age groups, different income levels, will have different impacts.”
The former Treasury official broke down the data further, showing viewers how much the expiration of these benefits will cost the average American.
“[Sixty-five thousand dollars] is the average income of an American worker today,” he said. “If you’re 60 years old, your premium is going to go up by $920 a month. That’s $11,040 a year. If you are making $65,000, paying $11,040 a year for health insurance is simply not realistic.”
Without these subsidies, Rattner said, “healthcare becomes unaffordable for a lot of people, and they start dropping their coverage.”
He added, “The estimates at the moment that have recently come in is that this year, somewhere between 17% and 26% of the people who bought their healthcare in the Obama exchanges will drop it.”
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Bu, as Rattner explained, that exodus will likely lead to even higher insurance premiums for those who need coverage the most.
“The people who drop [coverage] are also the healthier people, right? I mean, that’s logical,” he said. “And so what happens is that the remaining people in the insurance pools become sicker, have a higher morbidity rate … And when you have a sicker pool of people, that drives the insurance premiums up even more because the insurers are trying to recover the costs of insuring a smaller group of Americans who are not quite as healthy.”
The economic analyst predicted that Republicans’ refusal to extend these important subsidies could backfire on them in November. Rattner cited data from Georgia, where more than half a million residents have already dropped their insurance.
“Georgia is a really important state for the Democrats, because Jon Ossoff, the young Democratic Senator, is the only Democratic incumbent running in a state that Trump carried,” he said. “So, Georgia, which in the past was a red state, got a little bit purplish. Now, hopefully this will help Jon Ossoff in a tough race in Georgia.”
You can watch Rattner’s full analysis in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”