24% Higher Premiums in Kansas: What 2027 Rate Filings Say About Your State
In our home state of Kansas, individual market insurers filed for an average rate increase of 24.2% for 2027.
Kansas isn't an outlier. Across the country, the median and weighted-average proposed rate increase for 2027 ACA Marketplace plans sits at 15%, according to Louise Norris's state-by-state review at healthinsurance.org.
Look down the state table where rates have already been finalized or proposed: Arizona is up 27.9%, Alabama 25%, New Mexico 24.4%, Montana 22.6%, Washington 22.2%, South Carolina 22.1%, Oregon 21.6%, Georgia 20.7%, and New Jersey 19.8%. Even states at the bottom of the chart, like New York at 6% and Vermont at 3%, are moving in only one direction.
Those percentages land on top of a baseline that already jumped. Between 2025 and 2026, the average full-price Marketplace premium climbed from $619 a month to $741 a month. Add another 15% for 2027, and the typical unsubsidized premium crosses $850 a month, more than $10,000 a year for one person before the deductible is touched.
Why doesn't everyone feel the same shock on Nov 1?
Because 87% of Marketplace enrollees receive federal premium subsidies that rise alongside the local benchmark silver plan. If your income qualifies for a tax credit and you shop carefully near the benchmark, the federal government absorbs most of the rate hike.
The other 13% of on-exchange buyers, along with everyone who buys individual coverage off the exchange where subsidies don't exist, take the full hit on their own bank statement.
Insurers point to the same culprits in almost every state filing: rising hospital prices, specialty prescription drugs including GLP-1 medications, higher labor costs, and a smaller, sicker risk pool as healthy unsubsidized customers drop out. Notice how that feedback loop works. Higher prices chase healthy buyers out of the pool, which leaves a sicker pool, which becomes the justification for next year's 24% filing.
If you pay full price in Kansas, Georgia, Arizona, or any of the 40-plus states facing double-digit increases for 2027, auto-renewing your current plan is the most expensive habit in personal finance.
Pull up the 2027 rate filings for your state before Nov 1. Compare the total annual cost of the lowest-premium bronze or HSA-eligible plan against what you are paying now. Then put the savings toward a direct primary care doctor who posts a flat monthly fee, answers your texts, and runs blood work and prescriptions at wholesale cost.
The state insurance department approves the carrier's rate filing. You approve your household budget.
Get the newsletter: directcare.org/newsletter