The initial 2027 rate filings are public, and the Texas numbers are better than most of the country. Seventeen carriers filed in the Texas individual market, sixteen of them on the Marketplace, and the median requested increase came in around 13.6 percent. For comparison, Arizona's median is about 29 percent. That is the headline. The more useful story is underneath it, in which carriers are leaving, and in why the filed percentage is almost never the number that lands on your bill.
What every Texas carrier filed for 2027
Sixteen on-Marketplace filings, from under 5 percent to nearly 34 percent, with a median around 13.6.
These come from the federal Rate Review system, which published the initial filings on July 31, 2026. They are requested rates, not approved rates. Every Texas filing is marked pending review. Regulators examine them over the summer and issue final approved rates in the fall, before plans go on sale, and what a carrier asks for is often not what it gets.
- UnitedHealthcare Benefits of Texas 33.96 percent, and UnitedHealthcare of Texas 27.37 percent. The two UnitedHealthcare entities filed the largest increases in the state.
- Sendero Health Plans 31.07, Community Health Choice Texas 27.23, Community Health Choice 27.16, Moda Health Plan 25.25.
- Wellpoint 15.27, Community First 14.19, Molina Healthcare of Texas 12.96, Imperial 12.75, CHRISTUS Health Plan 12.53, Superior Health Plan 11.06.
- Oscar 9.56, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas 8.93, Harbor Health 7.91, Celtic Insurance Company 4.72. These four filed single digits.
- Ambetter Health of Texas filed 1.30 percent, the lowest in the state, but it is off-exchange only for 2027, so it carries no subsidy and will not appear when you shop on HealthCare.gov.
Why Texas looks better than its neighbors
Texas filed a median around 13.6 percent. Arizona filed about 29 and Alabama about 24.
Set the three states we work in side by side and the difference is stark. Texas: sixteen on-Marketplace filings, median about 13.6 percent, nine of them under 15. Arizona: six filings, median about 29 percent, only one under 15. Alabama: four filings, median about 24 percent.
The single most important number for most Texans is Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas at 8.93 percent. BCBSTX offers roughly two thirds of the individual plans sold in Texas, so the carrier the largest share of Texans actually holds filed under nine percent. Its plan-level range even runs from negative 12.21 percent to positive 22.28, meaning some BCBSTX plans are filed to come down next year.
Why the gap between states? Filings are built from each carrier's own claims experience, its local provider contracts, and how it reads the risk pool it expects. Texas has eighteen carriers competing, more than four times Arizona's field, and competition shows up in filings. None of that is a promise about your renewal, but it is a real difference and it is worth knowing before you panic at a national headline.
Two carriers are leaving, and that matters more than the percentages
Cigna and Baylor Scott and White are both out of the Texas individual market for 2027.
Four carriers filed in 2026 and are absent from the 2027 individual-market filings: Cigna HealthCare of Texas, Baylor Scott and White Insurance Company, Scott and White Health Plan, and Access to Care Health Plan.
If you hold one of those plans, your 2026 coverage is unaffected and you will not be left uninsured. The Marketplace re-enrolls you into a similar plan from a different company if you do nothing. That automatic move is where people get hurt. Similar means a comparable metal level. It does not mean the same network, the same drug list, the same deductible, or the same price, and nothing in the process checks whether your doctors are included.
The Baylor Scott and White exit deserves extra attention because it is a provider-owned plan and many members chose it for access to that system. This lands hardest in Dallas-Fort Worth, where both departing carriers sell; neither sells in Harris County. Our Dallas and Fort Worth page covers what to do about it.
Four carriers are also entering for 2027: Ambetter Health of Texas, CHRISTUS Health Plan, Harbor Health Insurance, and UnitedHealthcare Benefits of Texas. The field is not shrinking, it is reshuffling, and a reshuffle is exactly when the benchmark plan can move.
The filed percentage is not your percentage
A filed increase is an average across a carrier's entire book. Your change depends on your plan, county, age, and subsidy.
Every number above is an average across one carrier's whole Texas membership. Yours depends on which plan you hold, which of the 27 Texas rating areas you live in, your age, and above all whether you receive a premium tax credit.
About 93 percent of Texas Marketplace enrollees receive a credit, and among them the average net premium is roughly $41 a month. Your credit is tied to the benchmark Silver plan in your county, so when the whole market rises the credit generally rises with it. It does not track your specific plan. If your plan outruns the benchmark, you pay the difference; if it lags, you can come out ahead.
The people who feel a filed increase in full are those above 400 percent of the federal poverty level, where the credit is zero with no taper. The enhanced credits that softened that edge expired at the end of 2025. Only about 1.9 percent of Texas Marketplace enrollees sit above that line, which tells you how most people in that position have already responded.
If you pay full price, check Gold before Silver
In all 27 Texas rating areas the cheapest Gold plan costs less than the cheapest Silver plan.
This is the most useful thing we can tell an unsubsidized Texan and it has nothing to do with the 2027 filings.
Texas requires carriers to load the cost of cost-sharing reductions onto Silver premiums. That inflates the Silver benchmark, which inflates subsidies, which is why subsidized Texans pay so little. If you are paying full price, the same mechanism means Silver is priced above Gold. We checked published 2026 rates for a 40-year-old in every one of the 27 Texas rating areas, and in all 27 the cheapest Gold plan came in below the cheapest Silver plan, usually with a lower deductible as well.
Run the same comparison in Arizona and Gold is more expensive than Silver everywhere, the normal ordering. Texas is genuinely different, and defaulting to Silver here costs unsubsidized households real money every month. Our Texas coverage page goes through it in more detail.
What to do before open enrollment
Do the free work now, and if your carrier is leaving, put a reminder in for early November.
Open enrollment opens November 1 for coverage starting January 1. The closing date has been shifting under recent federal rule changes, so confirm the live deadline rather than trusting a date you read in July.
- Confirm your doctors and list your prescriptions now. It is free, it takes twenty minutes, and it is the step that decides whether a plan works for you.
- Build an honest income projection for 2027. Your credit is calculated from your projection, not last year's return, and near the 400 percent line it is the most important number you will give anyone.
- If you are with Cigna or Baylor Scott and White, do not auto-renew. In an ordinary year auto-renewal is a small mistake. In a year when your carrier is leaving the state, it is close to guaranteed to be an expensive one.
- Watch for the final approved rates in the fall. These are requests. We will update this guide when regulators rule.