Steep drop in number of people with Affordable Care Act health coverage

The HealthCare.gov website is the starting place for anyone who needs to buy health insurance on their own. Patrick Sison/AP hide caption toggle caption Patrick Sison/AP As many as 5 million people who buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces may drop their coverage this year, according to a new analysis from KFF, the nonpartisan health research organization. That's many more than the initial enrollment statistics indicated. About one million fewer people signed up for a plan this year compared to the year before, but insurers, administrators, and other health policy experts warned that the picture would likely get worse as time went on and people found they could not afford to keep their plans. A major reason for the sharp drop in enrollment is that enhanced premium tax credits for these health plans expired at the end of last year. Congress came close to a compromise to extend the extra federal money that helped keep premiums down, but the deal fell apart. "Costs went up significantly and a lot of people dropped their plans," says Cynthia Cox , a co-author of the analysis and director of KFF's Program on the ACA. The report analyzed a range of data, from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and state-based marketplaces, along with KFF survey data and estimates from Wakely Consulting Group. …