Mayland Matters
January 24, 2026
Danielle Brown
Excerpt:
“The number of people enrolling in health care plans through the state’s insurance marketplace may be at a record high, but the quality of coverage is down for thousands of Marylanders, officials told lawmakers this week.
The expiration of popular federal tax credits last year led to higher health care costs across the board, and some Marylanders just couldn’t afford their previous plans, opting for cheaper, less-comprehensive health care coverage for the 2026 plan year.
It was one of the many caveats that came with the newest enrollment data, which actually showed an overall increase in enrollments — despite expectations that rising costs would push more people away from coverage.
Michele Eberle, executive director of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, urged lawmakers to “dig deeper” into the data, because 5,743 people moved from a higher coverage policy called a “gold plan” to the bottom rung 0f coverage, a “bronze plan,” taking on significantly higher deductibles to maintain less-comprehensive health coverage.
“Most of our bronze plans carry $10,000 deductibles, so now that financial burden for medical has gone up tenfold for that family,” Eberle told senators during a Thursday briefing for the Finance Committee.
Gold plans tend to have a deductible of around $1,000, meaning plan holders only have to cover $1,000 of a significant medical cost before their insurance steps in to cover the rest.
“That’s really, really unfortunate that that’s happening,” said Vincent DeMarco, president of the Maryland Health Care for All coalition. “That means that people are not going to be able to get the health care that they need and are going to go to the hospital and create uncompensated care … we’ll have to pay for that hidden health care tax.”
A major factor to health care costs rising is the expiration of Enhanced Premium Tax Credits, a popular COVID-era federal benefit that helped keep monthly costs down for 190,000 Marylanders who purchased individual plans on the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace.”
Read the full article at MarylandMatters.org.
Last modified: January 28, 2026
