Healthcare workers are dropping their own health insurance as premiums climb

A family medicine doctor in Boise and his pharmacist wife dropped their coverage this year after premiums for a comparable plan rose to nearly $1,600 a month. Joshua and Ashley Durham are paying out of pocket from a health savings account instead — about $9,000 so far in 2026, less than the premiums would have cost, but enough that Durham calls the decision nerve-racking.

A nurse practitioner at another Boise clinic, Samantha LeGault, kept her plan because she has Crohn's disease and two daughters with medical conditions. Her premium doubled from $700 to $1,500 a month, taking roughly a fifth of her income. She dropped dental insurance and postponed her own sinus infection until it became an ear infection.

Congress let pandemic-era ACA tax credits expire last year. The Congressional Budget Office expects the uninsured population to grow by about 15 million over a decade as those credits lapse and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts an estimated $1.1 trillion. A retired healthcare executive in Iowa saw her premium jump from $75 to $800 a month when the subsidies ended.

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU, said the AMA may need to revisit its ethics guidance as more people turn to relatives for care they can't otherwise access.