That 'Obamacare Plan' Ad May Not Be Insurance. The FTC Just Warned 25 Marketers Before Open Enrollment.

If you’re about to click a “find your Obamacare plan” ad this weekend, slow down. The site behind it may sell you something that isn’t health insurance at all, and you won’t find out until a hospital bill shows up.

Open enrollment for 2027 coverage starts Sunday, November 1. On October 29, FTC staff mailed warning letters to 25 companies that market health plans or sell leads to the people who do. The message: stop dressing up lesser products as the real thing.

What the FTC keeps seeing

The letters spell out the pattern. Ads that misstate what a plan covers. Ads that call a product “major or comprehensive medical health insurance” when it isn’t. Ads that fudge the price. And ads promising “free offers, cash rewards, rebates, or other incentives” for signing up.

The products being passed off are mostly limited benefit plans and medical discount programs. A discount program gets you a lower price from participating providers. It doesn’t pay your bill. A limited benefit plan pays out, but only up to its limits.

Here’s how the game works up close. In January, the FTC got a federal court to halt a group of sellers led by Top Healthcare Options Insurance Agency. According to the FTC, their websites promoted “Affordable Care Act Plans,” “Obamacare Health Insurance Carriers” and “2024 Obama Care Plans.” The sites collected contact information for telemarketers, and what got sold, the FTC alleges, were limited benefit plans and discount memberships that left buyers “exposed to thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket medical expenses.”

This is a rerun. FTC staff sent 21 similar letters during open enrollment in December 2024. The industry got the memo then, too.

The math that matters

A real marketplace plan has a ceiling on your losses. For 2027, the most a plan can make you pay for covered in-network care is $12,000 for one person and $24,000 for a family, per CMS. That’s a rough year. But it’s a known rough year, and it ends.

The look-alikes have a ceiling too. It sits on what the plan pays, not on what you pay. Everything past it is yours.

So a cheaper monthly number on a plan that won’t cover the big bill isn’t savings. It’s a bet that you won’t get sick.

Verdict: if an ad won’t say plainly that it’s selling a marketplace plan, it’s selling something else.

Do this before you buy anything

Start at HealthCare.gov or call the Marketplace at 1-800-318-2596. That’s the FTC’s own advice, and it’s the official front door.

If you came in through an ad or a call, ask one question before you hand over a card number: “Is this a Marketplace plan with an out-of-pocket maximum?” Anything short of a plain yes, hang up.

Hang up on robocalls, period. A prerecorded call pitching health insurance is illegal under the Telemarketing Sales Rule, as the FTC reminds marketers in the letter. Report it, and any ad that lied to you, at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Mind the calendar. Enroll by December 15 for coverage that starts January 1. Open enrollment closes January 15. Our open enrollment guide covers every window, and the budget planner shows what a real premium does to your month.

The detail

A warning letter isn’t a verdict. The FTC says the letters don’t reflect a conclusion that any recipient broke the law, and it didn’t name the 25. It did spell out the stakes: civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation, with each call, ad or misrepresentation potentially counting separately.

The letters also list past cases, including a 2024 judgment of $195 million against Simple Health Plans and its lead generators and telemarketers, and $100 million in consumer redress from Benefytt Technologies in 2022.

Shopping harder because of price? Read what’s driving 2027 premiums, and log in to check your own account after CMS canceled coverage for more than 760,000 people in its broker crackdown.

How Candid Yak makes money. Some of the products we write about pay us if you apply or sign up through our links. That never changes our verdict, our rankings, or the numbers in this article. We call a bad deal a bad deal whether it pays us or not. Some brands shown in our comparison tools are placeholder examples while we finalize partner agreements, and we label them as such.