New Mexico wraps up 2026 Open Enrollment Period up 17% y/y thanks to backfilling ALL lost federal tax credits!

Last night, the 2026 ACA Open Enrollment Period (OEP) concluded across most states, including New Mexico (there are 10 other states with later deadlines).

BeWell NM, New Mexico's ACA exchange, is among the only ACA exchanges with ongoing daily enrollment data reports, last updated early this morning. Here's how they wrapped things up compared to the 2025 OEP (barring any clerical corrections in this year's data):

Overall enrollment in the Land of Enchantment is up a whopping 17%!

While this may sound surprising at first, it should be once you know that New Mexico is the only state which is FULLY BACKFILLING 100% of the lost federal tax credits for ALL enrollees.

Some other states are backfilling the expired tax credits (either partially or fully) for some enrollees, but New Mexico really went the extra mile to ensure that no one in their ACA marketplace population is being harmed by the subsidy expiration this year...and the results speak for themselves.

Mazel Tov, New Mexico!

The NM dashboard also includes a bunch of other demographic data. Besides there being 1,692 NM residents enrolled in standalone dental plans, there's also...

Breakout of enrollees by income level and both federal and state-based subsidies:

The $986/mo in state subsidies for enrollees earning less than 100% FPL is most likely going towards documented immigrants who have lived in the United States for less than 5 years (thus making them ineligible for Medicaid); until this year that population was eligible for ACA tax credits, but under the GOP's Big Ugly Bill, they're no longer eligible. I'm not sure why they'd also be receiving the nominal $14/mo in APTC as well, however.

It's also worth noting that only 3.1% of the enhanced tax credits are going towards enrollees who earn more than 700% FPL, which is noteworthy given that 700% is the proposed cut-off in the compromise bill being negotiated by the U.S. Senate. In fact, that $644K/mo comprises just 0.7% of what total tax credits would be if the enhanced subsidies were still in place this year.

Thanks to the combination of New Mexico's state-based subsidy program and their robust Premium Alignment pricing policy, over 60% of enrollees have Gold plans and another 36% have dramatically enhanced Silver coverage, with a mere 3% stuck in Bronze plans.

Finally, there's a tab which breaks out the average gross premiums as well as the portion of that covered by both federal and state subsidies (I believe these only refer to the average amount for those eligible for each type of subsidy):

• Average gross premium: $875/mo
• Average APTC (federal tax credits): $619/mo
• Average NM Premium Assistance: $181/mo
• Average NM Native American help: $90/mo
• Average NET premium: $141/mo

There's some other oddball data nuggets as well; check it out!

P.S. One other thing worth noting:

• As of the 12/27/25 CMS report, New Mexico was running 19.5% ahead of the same point a year earlier.
• By the end of the 2026 OEP, New Mexico was only running 17.1% ahead of the final 2025 OEP tally.

Put another way, 117.1% / 119.5% = 98.0%

Extrapolating that across other states would be difficult for a number of reasons, but if you were to assume a straight 2% drop across the board nationally relative to the 96.5% of last year's tally shown in the semifinal CMS report, it would put the final 2026 OEP enrollment tally at around 94.6% of last year's final total...or roughly 23.0 million total. This would be around 1.3 million fewer people than last year.