PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Pennsylvania’s health insurance marketplace continues to see a decline in enrollment.
Pennie, which was established in 2020 to improve the accessibility and affordability of health coverage for Pennsylvanians, continues to see a big drops in enrollment. 160,000 Pennsylvanians who were covered in 2025 under Pennie, Pennsylvania’s health insurance marketplace, dropped that coverage for 2026. This includes 85,000 enrollees who canceled coverage during open enrollment.
Pennie Executive Director Devon Trolley said cost is the main reason, due to the end of federal premium tax credits which lowered the cost of coverage.
“We also see a lot of people dropping who are older, many of them had the biggest price increases and lost tax credits altogether, and that's because there is now an income cliff in 2026 for those premium tax credits that did not exist in 2025,” Trolley explained.
Trolley said younger Pennsylvanians, hedging their bets on staying healthy are also going without insurance, which has an impact on overall costs since having younger people in the risk pool keeps costs low for everyone.
“It would be like if the only people who had home insurance had floods and fires, you need the people who don't have, whose houses are not damaged, in order to be able to spread those costs across everybody. That's how insurance works,” she added.
Trolley said unfortunately the decline is expected to continue.
