If you buy your own health insurance and your company is one of the dozen or so walking away from the ACA Marketplace after this year, you are going to be enrolled in a plan you never picked. It happens on December 15. It does not need your signature.
That is not a glitch. It is the rule, and HealthCare.gov states it plainly: if your company is not offering plans for next year, the Marketplace will re-enroll you in a plan with a different insurance company.
Who is leaving
At least a dozen insurers have announced exits after 2026, and the exits touch more than 20 states.
Cigna is leaving the individual market in all 11 states where it sells, about 369,000 Marketplace enrollees. Baylor Scott and White Health Plan is out of Texas, about 100,000. CareSource is leaving Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia. PacificSource is leaving Idaho, Montana, and Oregon. Providence Health Plan is leaving Oregon. Add ConnectiCare, Medica, Mending, Cox Health Plans, Celtic, Sunshine State Health Plan, and a chunk of Molina’s map.
Five carriers are coming in. That does not help you if the one leaving is yours.
What the match does and does not check
The Marketplace match is built to keep you insured. That is the whole job it was given, and it does it.
Here is what it was not given. It does not check whether your cardiologist is in the new network. It does not check whether your prescription is on the new formulary or sitting two tiers higher. It does not check whether your deductible just doubled.
And the ceiling moved. The out-of-pocket maximum for a single person goes to $12,000 in 2027, up from $10,600. The median requested rate increase is about 15%, stacked on last year. Your subsidy is priced off the benchmark silver plan in your area, and when carriers leave, that benchmark moves too.
Doing nothing used to be lazy. This year it is expensive.
Your calendar
By November 1, two letters land, one from your insurer and one from the Marketplace. Read both. They name the plan you will be dropped into.
November 1: open enrollment starts. Log in and look at everything available to you, not just the match.
Before you accept any plan, run three checks. Search your doctors in that plan’s provider directory. Search every prescription you take in its drug list. Compare the deductible to what you pay now. Fifteen minutes.
December 15: last day to enroll or switch for coverage starting January 1. This is the real deadline.
January 15: open enrollment ends, and anything you pick then starts February 1, which means January is a gap you pay for yourself.
If you are shopping and the monthly number is the part you cannot make work, put the whole household budget in one place first with the budget planner. Deciding between two plans is easier when you know what you actually have to spend.
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Sources
- Keep or change your Marketplace plan (HealthCare.gov)
- Health insurance dates and deadlines (HealthCare.gov)
- Health insurers are exiting the Marketplace again. Should consumers be worried? (healthinsurance.org, August 4, 2026)
- 2027 ACA open enrollment: what's changing (healthinsurance.org, September 2, 2026)
- Tracking Insurer Participation Changes in the ACA Marketplaces in 2027 (KFF)