Americans are also seeing lower out-of-pocket costs. Since April 1, the median deductible for Americans signing up for new coverage on HealthCare.gov has dropped by nearly 90 percent, to just $50. (Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA)
By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
Out across the long stretches of the country—where the roads narrow, the hospitals disappear, and the winters sit heavy—health insurance is not an abstraction. It is a quiet bargain that keeps families from slipping into ruin. That bargain is now on the edge of collapse.
Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year, and rural Americans stand to suffer most. These subsidies, introduced during the pandemic and extended through 2025, lowered premiums, expanded coverage, and pushed enrollment to historic highs. Without congressional action, the cost of insurance will rise sharply, and the hardest hit will be communities that already live miles from the nearest clinic, where a single medical bill can decide a family’s direction for a generation.
The math alone tells a story of quiet devastation. Rural counties, according to reporting in the files, saw some of the greatest gains in coverage after the enhanced subsidies took effect. In states that rejected Medicaid expansion, these subsidies became the last remaining thread tying people to affordable care. When that thread snaps, millions will confront premiums that double almost overnight. Families who once paid modest monthly amounts could face bills they simply cannot meet. Hospitals in regions where uncompensated care already threatens survival will be forced closer to closure.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that without an extension of the subsidies through 2026, the number of uninsured Americans will climb by millions in the first years after expiration.
Premiums would, on average, rise by more than 100%. For middle-income families, the return of the so-called subsidy cliff will mean costs that outpace budgets already worn thin by inflation and stagnant wages.
Yet the geography of the harm is not evenly drawn. Rural communities lean heavily on marketplace coverage. They have fewer employers offering insurance, fewer doctors, fewer mental health providers, and hospitals that operate on margins so narrow they can be undone by a single year of unpaid care. When subsidies disappear, these communities are the first to fall. Their residents are older, sicker, and poorer. Their choices are fewer. Their safety nets are thinner.
The political battle around them grows louder by the day. Senators Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Susan Collins of Maine have introduced legislation that would extend the subsidies for two years but add new restrictions, including mandatory premiums for all enrollees and an income cap of $200,000 per household. Moreno, in a written statement, accused Democrats of creating a system that favored insurance companies over patients. “I am willing to work with anyone to finally bring down costs for all Americans and hope my colleagues across the aisle will commit to doing the same,” he said.
Collins said the proposal aims to help families avoid sudden, unaffordable premium increases. A statement from her office said Congress must “pursue practical solutions that increase affordability without creating sudden disruptions in coverage.”
But rural America, which lives with the consequences of every delay, every stalemate, and every partisan declaration, does not have the luxury of waiting.
The reporting in the files paints a stark portrait: when insurance becomes too expensive, people delay care, skip treatment, or abandon coverage entirely. High-deductible plans—an alternative promoted by several Republican lawmakers—leave families drowning in out-of-pocket costs. Studies cited in KFF Health News show that patients with these plans often end up buried in medical debt, even when insured, and rural families, with their lower incomes and limited access to providers, are especially vulnerable.
It is in these regions where the distance between lawmaking and lived experience is measured not in political rhetoric but in ambulance rides, in shuttered emergency rooms, in the unpaid bills that arrive like uninvited visitors at the end of each month.
And yet, nationwide approval of the ACA is at its highest level since the law was enacted. Gallup’s latest findings show 57 percent of Americans support the ACA, driven by a sharp rise among independents. The survey, conducted as the shutdown ended and Congress prepared for another vote, suggests that the public understands what is at stake. It also shows how deeply the law has become woven into American life, especially in regions where alternatives do not exist.
But approval alone will not keep rural hospitals open or preserve the coverage gains of the last several years. The national fight now moves toward a deadline that will not wait. When it arrives, rural America will feel it first, and it will feel it hardest.
As one Gallup passage captures, “Approval has been at or above 50 percent in most years since 2017, but the law was less popular before then.”