Open enrollment for 2027 coverage opens November 1, 2026 and closes January 15, 2027. If you want coverage in force on January 1, your real deadline is December 15, not January 15.
Here is the part most people miss. Almost everything that decides what you pay is settled before the window opens: your income estimate, your household size, and whether you are above or below one specific line. Walking in unprepared on November 1 is how people end up auto-renewed into a plan that quietly got worse.
One thing worth knowing before you start. The Marketplace is not the only place health insurance is sold. There is a private side most people have never heard of, and for some households it is the better answer. We get to it at the end, after the parts that decide your Marketplace cost, because you cannot compare the two until you know what the first one actually costs you.
The three dates that matter
November 1 opens it, December 15 is the real deadline for January 1 coverage, January 15 closes it.
Those are the federal Marketplace dates for 2027 coverage. A handful of state-run marketplaces set their own closing date, so if you are in one of those, confirm yours rather than assuming the federal calendar applies.
December 15 is the date to circle. Enroll after it and your coverage starts February 1, which means January is a gap month. That gap is where a January prescription refill or an urgent care visit turns into a bill you pay in full.
- Now through October 31Preparation window. Estimate next year's income, confirm your household size, and check whether your doctors are still in network for 2027.
- November 1, 2026Open enrollment opens. First day you can enroll, renew, or change plans for 2027.
- December 15, 2026Last day to enroll or change for coverage starting January 1. This is your real deadline.
- January 1, 2027Coverage starts for anyone who enrolled by December 15 and paid the first premium.
- January 15, 2027Open enrollment ends. After this you need a qualifying life event.
The income line that decides your subsidy
Above 400% of the poverty level there is no premium tax credit at all. One dollar decides whether you get one.
For 2021 through 2025 there was no upper income limit on premium tax credits. That rule was temporary and it expired. For 2026 and 2027, the old ceiling is back: earn above 400% of the federal poverty level and you get no credit whatsoever.
It is a cliff, not a slope. A dollar under the line can be worth thousands of dollars a year. A dollar over it and you pay the full premium. Because it turns on the income you estimate rather than the income you earned, getting that estimate right matters more than any plan choice you make.
Where the 2027 subsidy cliff falls, by household size
| People in your household | 400% of the poverty level |
|---|---|
| 1 | About $63,840 |
| 2 | About $86,560 |
| 3 | About $109,280 |
| 4 | About $132,000 |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Based on the 2026 HHS poverty guidelines, which are the ones in effect when 2027 open enrollment starts, per 45 CFR 155.300(a). No agency publishes these thresholds directly; each is 400% of the published guideline for that household size, for the 48 contiguous states. Alaska and Hawaii have their own, higher guidelines. The figures for 2026 coverage are slightly lower.
Do not let it auto-renew
Auto-renewal keeps you insured, which is good, but it also renews you into next year's price and next year's network.
If you do nothing, the Marketplace will generally roll you into the same plan or its closest replacement. That protects you from being uninsured, and it is the single most expensive habit in this market.
Three things change underneath you while the plan name stays the same. The premium changes. The network changes, so the doctor who was in-network this year may not be next year. And the benchmark plan your credit is calculated against changes, which can move your subsidy even if your income did not move at all.
That last one catches people every year. Your income is identical, your plan is identical, and your bill is different, because the second-cheapest silver plan in your area got cheaper and took your credit down with it. If your renewal letter already landed and the number startled you, we wrote a separate walkthrough for that.
- Check your doctors by name for 2027. Networks are set per plan year, and a directory that was right in October can be wrong in January.
- Check your prescriptions against the 2027 formulary. Drug tiers move more often than premiums do.
- Re-run your credit even if nothing changed. The benchmark moves on its own.
What to have ready before November 1
Four things. Gathering them in October makes the enrollment itself quick.
None of this requires an agent. It just requires doing it before the window opens rather than during it.
- Your 2027 income estimate. Self-employed or commission-based? Build it from a realistic year, not your best one.
- Your household size for tax purposes. Who you claim, not who lives with you. Those are different questions and the second one is the wrong one.
- Your doctors and hospitals, by name. Not the plan you like, the providers you actually use.
- Your prescriptions, with dosages. Tier placement is where an apparently cheap plan gets expensive.
There is a private side to this market, and most people have never heard of it
Marketplace plans are not the only thing sold. Whether the other side fits you is not just an income question, and it is worth knowing it exists before you decide.
Almost everyone shopping for their own coverage assumes the Marketplace is the whole market. It is not. There is a private side, sold outside HealthCare.gov, and most people have genuinely never heard of it.
It is not only about your income. The subsidy matters and you should always price it first. But a credit does not fix a network. Every one of the 199 Marketplace plans in Arizona for 2026 is an HMO, which means network-only care and a referral to reach a specialist. If the specialist you rely on sits outside that network, a large subsidy still leaves you with a plan you cannot really use.
Two different markets, side by side
| What you are comparing | How the two differ |
|---|---|
| Who can buy | Marketplace: anyone, no health questions. Private: underwritten, so your health history matters. |
| Premium tax credit | Marketplace: yes, if your income qualifies. Private: never. |
| Pre-existing conditions | Marketplace: covered day one. Private: a clause applies, which is not a decline. |
| Network | Marketplace in Arizona: every plan is an HMO. Private: often broader, varies by carrier. |
| When it starts | Marketplace: January 1. Private: often a day or two, any time of year. |
| What you control | Marketplace: the metal tier. Private: deductible, benefit level and term length. |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Private plans are not ACA-compliant comprehensive coverage. If you have significant ongoing care, the Marketplace is usually the better fit and we will tell you so.
- Do not rule yourself out on your own. This is the one we see most. Someone takes one regular medication or has a manageable condition, decides they would never qualify, and never asks. Underwriting is lighter than people expect and a prescription does not automatically disqualify you.
- A clause is not a decline. Nearly every private plan has a pre-existing condition clause, so the question is never whether a plan has one. It is which plan leaves you best positioned.
- We run both numbers for you, in that order. We price your Marketplace plan first, with the subsidy applied, so you see the real figure and the real network. Then we show you what the private side looks like, with the tradeoffs stated plainly. Comparing them is the whole job and it costs you nothing.
- In Oregon this is a short bridge at best. Oregon caps these policies at three months including any renewal, so it is a gap-filler there rather than a strategy. Oregon households should look at whether small group coverage fits instead.
- In Texas it is a bridge you have to requalify for. Texas does not set its own duration limit. State law defines these plans by pointing at the federal rule, which currently allows an initial term of no more than three months and four months in total with the same company. You will see longer stretches advertised, and they are built by stacking terms from different carriers, which means fresh health questions each time and anything found along the way can count as pre-existing on the next one. It still works well for a known gap, and it is a different thing from what Arizona and Alabama allow, where one plan can run much longer.