New Jersey: 81% fewer enrollees paying $10 or less; 82% more enrollees paying $100 or more

Earlier today the New Jersey Dept. of Banking & Insurance put out a press release urging NJ residents to enroll in ACA coverage ahead of the final enrollment deadline on Saturday, January 31st.

The release also included some enrollment stats (including some pretty depressing ones), as well as a link to Get Covered NJ's Week 9 enrollment report:

As of January 2, 2026, a total of 493,727 residents are signed up for 2026 health coverage with Get Covered New Jersey, including 50,108 new consumers and 203,836 consumers who actively selected a plan. During the 2025 plan year, a total of 481,151 residents were signed up for 2025 health coverage with Get Covered New Jersey, including 70,507 new consumers as of January 2, 2025. The number of new consumers enrolling in coverage has decreased by nearly 30% in plan year 2026.

...There has been an increase in consumers actively selecting the lowest metal level plans, from 16% of active shoppers selecting Bronze plans for plan year 2025 to 30% of active shoppers selecting Bronze plans for plan year 2026 as of January 2. Active silver plan selections have fallen to 69% from 83% in plan year 2025. Nearly half (48%) of enrollees receiving financial help in Open Enrollment 2025 paid $10 a month or less for coverage, which has fallen to 10% for plan year 2026 as of January 2.

I've gone through the report itself as well as the same report from last year and have compared the numbers a little differently; instead of only looking at "active shoppers" or subsidized enrollees, I'm breaking out all of them for a more comprehensive comparison.

As they note, new enrollments are down 29% year over year...but total plan selections were actually up 2.6% year over year as of January 2nd thanks to 8% more existing enrollees re-enrolling for the new year.

The January 2nd caveat is important, because yesterday's CMS report, which includes an additional 8 days of enrollment, shows that only 89 additional NJ residents enrolled between 1/02/26 - 1/10/26, which doesn't exactly bode well for the remaining 3 weeks of Open Enrollment which haven't been recorded yet (NJ's deadline is 1/31, 2 weeks later than most states).

For comparison, last year 3,894 more NJ residents selected exchange plans between 1/05/25 - 1/11/25.

Overall, the number of NJ enrollees who have to pay full price this year has increased by 46%.

Also troublingly, as noted in the press release, the portion of enrollees in Bronze plans (with much higher deductibles & other out-of-pocket costs) has jumped from 15% of the total to 23%, while the portion in Silver plans has dropped from 84% to 76% (Gold & Catastrophic enrollment are pretty much the same as a percent of the total).

The NJ report also breaks out the net monthly premiums by different brackets, although I prefer to do it more granularly:

• Last year nearly 42% of all NJ enrollees only paid $1 or less per month after subsidies; this has dropped to just 6.6% of the total

• Last year 46.6% paid $10 or less; this has dropped to just 8.6%.

• At the upper end, last year just 32.6% of all NJ enrollees paid more than $100/month; this has jumped to nearly 58% of the total

Put another way, the number of enrollees paying $10 or less/month has dropped by over 81%, from 224,416 to just 42,410...while the number paying more than $100/month has increased by a similar 82% (from 157,017 to 285,784).

None of this bodes well for effectuated enrollment or affordability going forward...