ACA Open Enrollment for 2027 in Florida: What’s Changing and How to Keep Your Premium Down

“The amount of juggling we have to do to just have insurance is not rational.” That is how a self-employed consulting-firm owner described buying her own coverage to CNBC in February 2026, after the enhanced subsidies ended. If you run a business out of a home office in Mandarin, drive for three platforms out of Orange Park, or retired at 60 to St. Augustine, you probably recognise the feeling. The good news for the 2027 season is that the juggling now has clear rules. The bad news is that the rules are less forgiving than they were.

Here is the short answer. Open enrollment for 2027 Marketplace coverage in Florida opens on 1 November 2026 and closes on 15 January 2027. Your premium after the tax credit depends on three numbers you can see today: your household income as a share of the poverty line, the 2027 IRS contribution table, and the benchmark Silver price in your ZIP. Only the last one is still unknown. This guide works through all three, shows the IRS arithmetic, and lists the legal ways to keep the first number where you want it.

We already wrote up why 2026 premiums jumped when the enhanced credits expired, in the end of enhanced ACA subsidies in Florida. This post is about the next decision: what to do in the 2027 window.

When is open enrollment for 2027 coverage in Florida?

HealthCare.gov lists the dates for 2027 coverage. Open enrollment starts on 1 November 2026. If you enrol in or change a plan by 15 December and pay the first premium, coverage starts on 1 January 2027. Open enrollment ends on 15 January 2027, and if you sign up between 16 December and 15 January, coverage starts on 1 February.

That six-week gap matters more than it looks. If your current plan simply renews, nothing breaks. But if your insurer leaves your county, or you are coming off COBRA or an employer plan at year end, waiting until January means a month with no coverage at all. Treat 15 December as your real deadline and 15 January as the fallback.

Two windows get confused every autumn. Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period runs 15 October to 7 December and has nothing to do with the Marketplace. If one spouse turns 65 in 2027 and the other is younger, you may be working both calendars in the same kitchen, and the younger spouse stays on the Marketplace until their own Medicare starts.

What is actually different about 2027?

Less than the headlines suggest, but every change points the same way: more of the risk sits with you. The structure that came back in 2026, a credit that stops at 400% of the poverty line, stays. The parameters inside it have all been indexed. Here is the year-on-year view.

Notice the repayment row. The plan you are on right now is already the first year with no repayment cap. You will reconcile 2026 when you file in spring 2027, a few months after you choose your 2027 plan, so it is worth getting both estimates right in the same sitting.

Where is the 400% line for your household in 2027?

The premium tax credit only exists between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty line, and the Congressional Research Service confirms that with the enhanced provision gone, the 400% maximum is back. For 2027 coverage the Marketplace uses the 2026 HHS poverty guidelines: $15,960 for one person and $5,680 for each additional person. Multiply by four and you have your line.

Household size means your tax household: you, a spouse if you file jointly, and anyone you claim as a dependent. Income means modified adjusted gross income for the whole tax household, for calendar year 2027, not the year you are living through now. That is the hard part. You are being asked in November 2026 to estimate a number you will not know until you file in 2027.

If you would rather not do the multiplication, our short answer on the income limit for ACA subsidies lays out both years side by side.

How the 2027 tax credit is calculated

The credit is not a percentage of your premium. It is the gap between the price of a reference plan and an amount the IRS says you can afford. The reference plan is the benchmark: the second-lowest-cost Silver plan available to your household in your ZIP. The amount you are expected to pay comes from the IRS applicable percentage table, which for 2027 is set by Rev. Proc. 2026-26.

Within each band the percentage climbs in a straight line from the initial to the final figure. The steps the IRS uses on Form 8962 are simple enough to do on a napkin:

1. Find your poverty-line percentageDivide household income by the poverty guideline for your household size, multiply by 100, and drop the decimals. The Form 8962 instructions say do not round. $40,000 for one person is 250.6%, which becomes 250%.
2. Read off the applicable percentageFind your band in the table and slide between the initial and final figures. At exactly 250% for 2027 that is 8.66%. At 344% it is 10.22%, because the top band is flat.
3. Work out your expected contributionMultiply income by that percentage. $40,000 × 8.66% is $3,464 a year, or about $289 a month. That is what the IRS says you can afford for the benchmark plan.
4. Subtract it from the benchmarkThe benchmark Silver premium for your household, minus your expected contribution, is your credit. Spend it on any metal level. If the plan you pick costs less than the credit, you pay nothing for premium, though the credit cannot go below zero.

We checked the method against HealthCare.gov itself. Run the same four steps on 2026 numbers for a single 21-year-old in Duval County with $40,000 of income, and you get a credit of $247 a month. That is the exact figure HealthCare.gov’s own Marketplace API returns for that person in that county for the 2026 plan year.

What does the credit look like at different incomes in Jacksonville?

This is where the cliff stops being abstract. The table below uses the 2027 IRS table and the 2026 poverty guidelines, and stands in the published 2026 Duval County benchmark (scaled for age by the CMS federal default age curve) for the 2027 benchmark that does not exist yet. Treat the dollar amounts as the shape of the curve, not a quote.

Read the last two rows of each group. For the single 40-year-old, the final $160 of income costs $138 a month, or about $1,656 a year. For the family of four, the final $1,000 of income costs $1,232 a month, close to $14,800 a year. The older the household, the bigger the cliff, because the benchmark scales with age while the expected contribution does not.

Want your own numbers rather than ours? Our premium tax credit calculator runs this exact method with the 2027 table, and the health insurance premium estimator scales the 2026 county benchmarks to your household’s ages.

Why the end of the repayment cap matters more than the cliff

“Why is Turbotax saying I have to pay back all of the advance payments I got for the premium tax credit?” That question, posted on the TurboTax community forum, is going to be a lot more common in spring 2027. Most people take the credit in advance, paid straight to the insurer every month, based on the income they estimated when they enrolled. At tax time, Form 8962 compares that estimate with what actually happened.

Until 2025, if you under-estimated and your real income stayed below 400% of the poverty line, the amount you had to repay was capped. The IRS confirmed in December 2025 that the One Big Beautiful Bill removed those limitations on repayment of excess advance payments for tax years beginning after 31 December 2025. From tax year 2026 onward, you repay the full difference.

This is the self-employed reader’s problem in particular. A W-2 employee can predict next year’s income to within a few hundred dollars. A 1099 contractor in Jacksonville Beach with one big client cannot. The fix is not to avoid the credit. It is to report income changes to the Marketplace during the year, so the advance payment follows your real income instead of a November guess.

What did benchmark premiums cost across the First Coast in 2026?

The 2027 benchmark prices will not be public until 1 November. The 2026 ones are, and they show how much your ZIP code matters. These are the HealthCare.gov prices for a single 21-year-old for the 2026 plan year, at one representative ZIP per county. Older adults pay a multiple of these figures set by the federal age curve: about 1.28 times at 40 and 3 times at 64.

Two things jump out. Nassau County has the highest benchmark of the five and the fewest plans, 31 Silver options against 75 in Broward. And because the credit is tied to the benchmark, the Nassau credit was higher too: $324 a month for that 21-year-old against $243 in Broward. A higher benchmark does not automatically mean a higher net premium. It depends on how far the cheaper plans sit below it.

The other thing worth knowing is that Bronze is not as far below Silver as people assume. In Duval the gap at age 21 was $141.08 a month in 2026. Credits are fixed in dollars, so a household whose credit exceeds the Bronze price can pay $0 for Bronze. That is the move many families made in 2026. Whether it suits you depends on the deductible you can live with, which we come back to below.

There are still a lot of people outside the system entirely. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2023 five-year estimates) counts 112,908 uninsured people in Duval and 256,243 in Broward, against an uninsured rate of 6.4% in St. Johns.

Will 2027 premiums go up in Florida?

We do not know the Florida number yet, and we are not going to guess. Insurers had to file their 2027 individual-market rates with the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation by 10 June 2026, and the Office’s notice to industry says it must finish reviewing Marketplace filings by 12 August 2026. The Office lists its 2027 premium tables on its federal health insurance page, but the documents themselves had not been posted as of this writing. Final 2027 prices will appear on HealthCare.gov when open enrollment opens on 1 November.

The national picture is available, from an analyst rather than a regulator. KFF, the health policy research organisation, reviewed filings from 276 insurers across all 50 states and DC and reported a median proposed increase of 15% for 2027, down from an 18% median proposed for 2026 but still the second-highest requested change since 2018. KFF names rising health-care prices as the main driver, with insurers also pointing to the expiration of the enhanced credits and a sicker remaining risk pool.

For context on what people actually paid, KFF’s May 2026 analysis found that the average monthly premium paid after tax credits rose 58%, from $113 to $178, between 2025 and 2026. Those are KFF figures, not CMS figures. They describe the year you have just lived through, not the one you are choosing.

What a 15% median means for you is the reason not to auto-renew. Increases are never uniform. One carrier’s Silver plan can rise sharply while another’s barely moves, and when the lowest-cost Silver plans change order, the benchmark moves and your credit moves with it. If you have a 2026 plan you like, check it again in November rather than assuming it is still the same deal.

The $12,000 out-of-pocket maximum and picking a metal level

CMS set the 2027 maximum annual limitation on cost sharing at $12,000 for self-only coverage and $24,000 for a family, up from $10,150 and $20,300 for 2026. That is the most any Marketplace plan can make you pay in deductibles, copays and coinsurance for covered in-network care in a year. Plans can set lower limits, and many Silver and Gold plans do. A Bronze plan is allowed to sit right at the ceiling.

CMS’s 2027 payment notice also changed the permissible cost-sharing rules for individual-market Bronze plans beginning with the 2027 plan year, so a Bronze plan you knew in 2026 may not look the same in 2027. Read the 2027 summary of benefits, not last year’s.

The honest way to compare plans is to add up two numbers: the year’s premium after your credit, and the out-of-pocket maximum. That sum is your worst case. Then compare what you would pay in a quiet year with a few visits and generic prescriptions. A $0 Bronze plan with a $12,000 ceiling and a $90-a-month Silver plan with a $4,000 ceiling can both be right, for different families. If your income is under 250% of the poverty line, look at Silver first, because that is the only metal level where cost-sharing reductions apply.

Our Jacksonville Marketplace guide walks through how to check your doctors and prescriptions against a plan before you enrol. Do that before you look at price.

How can you legally keep your 2027 premium down?

Your income is the one input you control, and the law gives you several honest ways to shape it. Each of these reduces modified adjusted gross income. None of them changes your actual cash income, and none of them is a loophole. They are the same deductions the tax code offers everyone, aimed at the year you are being measured on.

1. Estimate 2027 income from the bottom upStart with your 2026 return, then adjust for what you know is changing: a contract ending, a spouse going part-time, a pension or Social Security starting. Include interest, dividends and capital gains. Leave out Roth withdrawals that are not taxable.
2. Use pre-tax retirement contributionsTraditional 401(k), solo 401(k), SEP-IRA and traditional IRA contributions reduce MAGI. For tax year 2026 the IRS limits are $24,500 for 401(k) deferrals and $7,500 for IRAs; 2027 limits have their own announcement. Near the line, this is the largest lever most self-employed people have.
3. Use an HSA with an eligible planIf you pick an HSA-eligible plan, contributions come off MAGI too. For 2026 the IRS limits are $4,400 for self-only and $8,750 for family coverage. Not every Bronze plan is HSA-eligible, so check the plan detail page.
4. Plan the timing of large incomeEarly retirees control when they sell investments, convert to Roth or draw from a traditional IRA. Spreading a large sale across two tax years can keep both years under the line. Talk to your tax preparer before you sell, not after.
5. Update the Marketplace when income changesLog in and report the change within the year. Your advance credit adjusts from the next month, which reduces what you repay in April. With no repayment cap from 2026, this is a step you cannot skip.
6. Re-shop on net premium, not on last year’s planCompare every plan’s price after your credit, then add the out-of-pocket maximum. Repeat every November, because the benchmark moves.

If you want a second set of eyes on the numbers, that’s what we’re here for. Bring last year’s return and your best guess at 2027, and we will run it with you.

Early retirees on the First Coast: the cliff is steepest for you

A 60-year-old pays almost three times what a 21-year-old pays for the same plan under the federal default age curve that Florida uses. The expected contribution is a share of income, not of age, so the credit for older households is much larger, and losing it hurts much more. This is why early retirees in Ponte Vedra, Fleming Island and Fernandina Beach have more to gain from income planning than anyone else in the Marketplace.

The good news is that retirees usually have more control over income than workers do. Cash savings, Roth balances and taxable accounts with a high cost basis can fund a year of living expenses while showing very little MAGI. We covered the full three-year bridge to Medicare in retiring at 62 in Northeast Florida. The point to add for 2027 is that the line has moved to $86,560 for a couple, and with no repayment cap, a mid-year Roth conversion that pushes you over now costs the whole year’s credit.

Before and after: one St. Augustine couple’s 2027 decision

Illustrative example only. Dan and Ruth are both 60, retired early, and live in St. Augustine. Their 2027 income will be a $40,000 pension plus whatever they draw from savings. The 2026 St. Johns County benchmark for a 21-year-old was $545.75 a month; scaled by the federal age curve for two 60-year-olds, that is $2,962.33 a month, or about $35,548 a year. We use that 2026 price as a stand-in for 2027.

Before. They plan to draw $48,000 from a traditional IRA, bringing 2027 income to $88,000. That is 406% of the 2026 poverty guideline for two. No credit. They would pay the full benchmark-level premium of about $35,548 for the year for a Silver plan, and they would not find out it mattered until the Marketplace application told them.

After. They take $46,000 from the IRA and the remaining $2,000 from a savings account, bringing 2027 income to $86,000. That is 397% of the poverty line. Their expected contribution at 10.22% is $8,789 for the year, about $732 a month, and their illustrative credit is about $26,759 for the year, roughly $2,230 a month. They spent the same money. They reported $2,000 less income.

We cannot promise any household that outcome, because 2027 prices are not out and every couple’s accounts are different. The example exists to show the size of the stakes near the line. Moving $2,000 of spending from one account to another was worth about thirteen times that much in premium help on these assumptions.

Families with children: what changes and what does not

Children raise both sides of the calculation. Each dependent adds $5,680 to the poverty guideline for 2027, which pushes the 400% line up by $22,720 per child. Each child also adds to the benchmark premium, though children under 15 are rated at the lowest point on the age curve. For a family of four in Orange Park or Fruit Cove, the line is $132,000 for 2027 coverage.

If one parent has an offer of employer coverage, that offer can block the credit for that parent. The IRS required contribution percentage that decides whether employer coverage counts as affordable is 10.22% for plan years beginning in 2027, under the same revenue procedure. Ask the employer for the cost of employee-only coverage before you apply, because that is the number the Marketplace will ask you for.

Small business owners in Jacksonville who are weighing a group plan against everyone buying their own should read our guide to small business health benefits, because an employer offer changes this math for the whole family.

If you live in Georgia or Texas

Georgia. Georgia runs its own state-based marketplace, Georgia Access, and Georgians cannot enrol through HealthCare.gov. For the 2026 plan year its window ran 1 November 2025 to 15 January 2026, and the contact centre is 888-687-1503. Georgia Access had not published its 2027 dates in anything we could verify before this article went up, so check georgiaaccess.gov before you plan around the Florida calendar. If you live in Kingsland or St. Marys and work in Jacksonville, your residence decides the marketplace. Our Georgia Access guide covers the details, and the Georgia page shows who we work with there.

Texas. Texas uses HealthCare.gov, so the Florida dates in this article apply. The 2026 benchmarks for a 21-year-old were $522.26 a month in Dallas County and $463.27 in Harris County, both below every First Coast county. The 2027 tax-credit table and the poverty guidelines are federal, so the worked examples above apply in Texas with your own county’s benchmark swapped in.

How we help

We start with income, because for 2027 that is where most of the money is. We look at your 2026 return and your expected 2027 income, show you where you sit against the line, and flag anything likely to push you over: a Roth conversion, a large capital gain, a contract renewal. Then we compare the actual 2027 plans in your ZIP on net premium plus out-of-pocket maximum, after checking your doctors and prescriptions.

We are an independent agency based in Jacksonville and licensed to help with Marketplace coverage in Florida, Georgia and Texas. We do not represent every insurer in every county, and we will say so when a plan we do not offer is the better fit. You can read more about how we work on our ACA and Marketplace page. We’re in Jacksonville, and we’ll meet you where it suits — in person, by phone or by video.

What you get from doing this properly once

You stop being surprised in April. The 2027 rules reward people who know their number in November and punish people who guess. A household that knows its income, knows its line and updates the Marketplace when life changes will keep every dollar of credit it is entitled to, and will not hand any of it back at tax time.

Whatever you decide, decide it on the numbers. If you want help getting to them, we’re here.