Breaking: Thing everyone expected to happen, happens. Now what?

So, as expected, both the Senate Democrats bill to simply extend the enhanced ACA tax credits for 3 more years and the Senate Republican bill to make everything worse just failed to reach cloture (appropriately enough, they both received the exact same vote counts: 51-48).

Sen. Rand Paul voted against the GOP bill and 4 Republicans voting for the Democrat's bill, including Sen. Josh Hawley, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Sen. Dan Sullivan & Sen. Susan Collins voting for it. I'm not sure who the missing vote in each was, not that it matters much now.

So, now what?

Well, the House may end up voting on one of their dozen or so bills they've been tossing around, but I wouldn't count on it, and even if one of them passes, it'd be almost certain to fail in the Senate.

With just 4 more days before the initial December 15th deadline to enroll for coverage starting in January, only a weeks' worth of legislative session days before the holiday break, and just 20 days before the enhanced subsidies actually expire on New Year's Eve, it's looking grim.

At this point, I strongly urge any current ACA enrollees who've been holding out on actively re-enrolling in hopes of there being a last-minute deal to extend the enhanced subsidies to stop waiting, ACTIVELY shop around and ACTIVELY select your 2026 policy.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE PASSIVELY AUTO-RENEWED INTO YOUR 2026 PLAN.

Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to be screwed if you do. The plan you're currently enrolled in may very well turn out to be the best choice for many enrollees.

HOWEVER, you should absolutely visit your ACA exchange website, log into your account, enter your 2026 projected information and ACTUALLY COMPARE PLANS AND PRICING before deciding which plan to enroll in starting in January.

And you have to do it by Monday night in most states to avoid being auto-renewed by the exchange at whatever the new net premium is.

Now, if for some reason you don't make that deadline, there are a few caveats:

• Several states have a later January 1st enrollment deadline: 12/23 in MA and 12/31 in CA, MD, NV, NJ, NM & RI

• In the other 44 states, the deadline is 12/15...but in 43 of them you'll still have until at least 1/15 to switch to a different plan for coverage starting in February if you have to.

• One big exception: In IDAHO, the 12/15 deadline is the only deadline for Open Enrollment...if you miss it, you're SOL for the year unless you become eligible for a Special Enrollment Period for some reason.

Read my 2026 Open Enrollment Guide for all of this and much more info.

Also, remember that yes, it's still possible (not likely, but possible) that Congress will end up passing some sort of enhanced tax credit extension after the holidays as well.

IF this happens, it could absolutely be made retroactive to the beginning of January. After all, that's how they were passed in the first place: The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was passed and signed into law by Democrats and President Biden in March 2021, with the enhanced subsidies made retroactive to the beginning of the year.

If memory serves, the way it was handled was that the tax credits were put towards monthly premiums starting in May or June of 2021, and the extra subsidies for January - April or May were paid in the form of tax refunds when people filed their 2021 taxes in early 2022.

That wasn't ideal, but it's doable, and if something like that were to happen in 2026 it would still help a lot of people.

Again, I'm not saying that's likely to happen, but it's something to keep an eye on.

Good luck to us all.