What you need to know to enroll in the Affordable Care Act in 2025

Explore yours or your family’s specific healthcare options through the Affordable Care Act, find a health plan, and start a 2025 application now.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the comprehensive healthcare reform signed into law by then-President Barack Obama in March 2010 that expands access to health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans.

In Florida, more than 4.2 million residents enrolled during the open enrollment period last year, making the Sunshine State the nation’s leader in signups for health plans on the ACA marketplace for 2024.

How does the ACA work?

The health care law offers rights and protections for those that need affordable healthcare plans. Some rights and protections apply to plans in the Health Insurance Marketplace or other individual insurance, some apply to job-based plans, and some apply to all health coverage. But overall, the law has two main goals:

• Make affordable health insurance available to more people by providing consumers with subsidies that lower costs for households with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level (FPL). 
• Expand the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the FPL. Under its Republican-majority leadership, Florida is one of only 10 states that has refused to expand its Medicaid program.

How the health care law protects you

The ACA also requires insurance plans to cover people with pre-existing health conditions, including pregnancy, without charging more. It additionally:

• Provides free preventive care such as colorectal cancer screening for adults 45 to 75, depression screening, Diabetes (Type 2) screening for adults 40 to 70 years who are overweight or obese, and diet counseling for adults at higher risk for chronic disease, among others. 
• Gives young adults more coverage options.  For example, people under 26 may be able to get on a parent’s health insurance plan. And someone in school may be able to enroll in a student health plan and meet the law’s requirement for coverage.
• Ends lifetime and yearly dollar limits on coverage of essential health benefits, which means that insurance companies can’t set a dollar limit on what they spend on essential health benefits during the entire time a person is enrolled in that plan, nor can they set a yearly dollar limit on what they spend for coverage.
• Makes it illegal for health insurance companies to cancel a person’s health insurance just because they get sick.

The protections outlined above may not apply to grandfathered health insurance plans, which are health insurance plans that were already in effect as of March 23, 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. 

RELATED: Rick Scott’s refusal to expand Medicaid deprived Floridians of health care

Additional rights and benefits include breastfeeding equipment and support, birth control methods and counseling, and mental health and substance abuse services, as well as the right to appeal a health plan decision and the right to choose an individual Marketplace plan rather than the one the employer offers. 

For all these reasons, the ACA has proven popular among Floridians, said Xonjenese Jacobs, director of Florida Covering Kids & Families, a group based out of the University of South Florida that helps people navigate the health insurance market.

“People want accessibility to care, people are interested in ensuring that they’re living healthier lifestyles and that they have access to services that are going to help them to do so,” Jacobs said.

What you need to know to enroll

If you’d like to explore yours or your family’s specific healthcare options through the Affordable Care Act, the government’s site offers the individualized information you need, as well as the application to enroll for 2025.

• Visit HERE to find a health plan and to start a 2025 health plan application now.
• Visit HERE to learn more about special enrollment periods.
• Visit HERE to learn how to protect yourself from fraud when you apply for health coverage.

Is the ACA in danger?

With his election in 2016, then-President Donald Trump launched efforts to repeal and replace the ACA, stating that the United States should delay “the implementation of any provision or requirement of the ACA that would impose a fiscal burden on any State.” 

The law was saved by a thumbs-down vote from Republican Sen. John McCain, but there is concern that after Trump’s win in this year’s election, millions of Americans could lose the subsidies next year that help them pay for health insurance. The subsidies — which expire at the end of 2025 — increased the amount of assistance available to people who want to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. 

This leaves Congress and President Trump to decide whether to extend the subsidies, something the president-elect and Republicans have signaled they won’t support. If the subsidies aren’t extended, millions of people will likely lose their coverage in 2026 because they will no longer be able to afford it.

RELATED: What’s new and what to watch for in the upcoming ACA open enrollment period