Small Business Financial Article

Open enrollment season is unfolding differently this year. If you run a small business or handle benefits alongside ten other jobs, you’ve probably already heard the number: premiums on the ACA marketplace are up an average of 26% for 2026, and that’s before accounting for the extra subsidies that have kept coverage affordable for the last few years. Those enhanced tax credits expired at the end of 2025, and for millions of people, that means premium payments that could more than double.

That matters for your business, even if you don’t sponsor a marketplace plan directly. Some of your employees are on it, and some of your part-timers rely on it. Even employees on your group plan are watching their friends and family deal with sticker shock, which shapes what they expect from you.

Why premiums are climbing everywhere, not just on the marketplace

Hospital costs are rising, GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are expensive and increasingly requested, and insurers are pricing on the risk that healthier people will drop marketplace coverage once it costs more, leaving a sicker, costlier pool behind. That last effect alone is adding several points to marketplace rates. None of this is confined to the individual market. Group plan renewals for 2026 are running hotter than usual, and many small businesses are opening their renewal notices and feeling the same jolt their employees are on the marketplace side.

What’s actually different about the marketplace this year

The subsidy cliff is back. Anyone earning more than 400% of the federal poverty level, about $62,600 for an individual or $128,600 for a family of four, loses federal assistance entirely and pays full price. Before the enhanced credits, that cliff already pushed a lot of people out of coverage. Now it’s doing it again, and it’s catching people who assumed subsidies were a permanent fixture. If any of your employees or contractors buy their own coverage, this is worth flagging to them directly rather than assuming they’ve kept up with the news.

What employees are actually expecting from you right now

Employees aren’t just asking, "do we have insurance." They’re asking whether it’s still worth what they’re paying for it, and whether the company understands that their household budget just got squeezed. A few things are worth doing before your next renewal:

• Walk through plan options with real numbers, not just a benefits fair PDF nobody reads. Compare a high-deductible plan with an HSA actually costs an employee over a year versus a PPO, using your actual premium quotes.
• Consider whether an HSA contribution from the company, even a modest one, does more for retention than a slightly richer plan design. Employees remember cash that shows up in an account they control.
• Look at voluntary benefits, critical illness, accident coverage, that can offset some of the deductible risk employees are taking on with leaner plans.
• If you employ part-time or seasonal workers who rely on the marketplace, make sure they know about the subsidy cliff and open enrollment deadlines. A short email in October is cheap and it’s the kind of thing people remember.

None of this fixes the underlying cost problem. Premiums are going up because health care costs are going up, and no amount of clever plan design changes that math for long. But businesses that treat benefits as a conversation instead of an annual form to fill out tend to keep people through years like this one. The ones that go quiet until the renewal letter shows up tend to lose them.