Florida is the largest individual health insurance market in the country. 4,538,772 Floridians selected a marketplace plan for 2026 — more than any other state — and they had sixteen insurers to choose between, also more than any other state. That much choice sounds like an advantage. In practice it is the reason Florida is genuinely hard to shop, and why so many people end up in a plan that does not fit them.
What changed for 2026
Three things moved at once, and Floridians are still absorbing all of them.
Aetna left. Aetna exited Florida’s individual marketplace at the end of 2025, and roughly 150,000 Florida enrollees had to find a new carrier. Many were auto-enrolled into a replacement plan rather than choosing one. If that was you, the plan you are in now was picked by a matching algorithm, not by you — and it is worth confirming your doctors and prescriptions actually survived the move.
Rates rose steeply. Florida carriers filed an average increase of 31.5% for 2026 before subsidies, per the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. Florida Blue’s approved change was about 29.6%.
The enhanced subsidies expired. The larger federal premium tax credits that had been in place since 2021 ended December 31, 2025. That is the change most people actually felt, because it hit net cost rather than sticker price.
One addition ran the other way: Community Care Network, trading as 22 Health, entered the Florida marketplace for 2026 — though only in Broward County. It is the rare piece of good news in an otherwise contracting year, and it applies to a single county.
The 2027 enrollment window
Florida uses HealthCare.gov, the federal marketplace. Open enrollment for 2027 coverage runs November 1, 2026 through January 15, 2027, with two dates that do different jobs:
- December 15, 2026 — enroll by this date for coverage beginning January 1, 2027
- January 15, 2027 — the final day to enroll; plans chosen after December 15 generally start February 1
Miss both and you need a qualifying life event — losing job coverage, moving, marriage, a new child, or an income change affecting your subsidy — to enroll through a Special Enrollment Period, usually within 60 days of the event.
Deadlines differ across the states we serve. The full breakdown is here: 2027 open enrollment deadlines by state.
Who covers Florida
Sixteen insurers participated for 2026. The ones most Floridians will actually encounter:
| Carrier | What to know |
|---|---|
| Florida Blue | The only major carrier offering true PPO plans, and the one that shows up most consistently across the state. Its HMO arm trades as Health Options. |
| Ambetter from Sunshine Health | Centene’s Florida brand. Frequently among the lowest premiums, with correspondingly narrow networks. |
| Capital Health Plan | Tallahassee-area HMO with a strong quality record. Regional, not statewide. |
| AvMed | Long-established Florida nonprofit, strongest in South and Central Florida. |
| Health First | Space Coast integrated system — hospital and plan under one roof. |
| Florida Health Care Plan | Volusia and Flagler focused, tightly integrated locally. |
| Molina, Oscar, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, Wellpoint, AmeriHealth Caritas | National and multi-state carriers with varying county footprints. |
| 22 Health (Community Care Network) | New for 2026, Broward County only. |
No Floridian sees all sixteen. Availability is set county by county, and the spread is enormous: dense South Florida counties routinely see eight or more carriers, while rural counties may see two or three. The number that matters is how many carriers serve your county, not how many serve the state.
Carrier participation reflects plan year 2026. Networks, service areas and pricing are refiled annually — confirm current availability for your county before enrolling.
The PPO problem
This is the structural fact about Florida that catches people out. Florida Blue is the only major 2026 marketplace carrier selling true PPO plans, in most though not all of the 67 counties. Nearly everything else on the Florida exchange is an HMO or EPO built around a narrow local network.
For plenty of people that is fine. If you use a local primary care doctor and stay in your county, an HMO is often the better value and there is no reason to pay a PPO premium for freedom you will not use.
It stops being fine in specific situations: you see a specialist at a hospital system outside your plan’s network, you split the year between Florida and another state, you travel for work, or you have a condition being managed by a particular physician you are not willing to change. In those cases network structure matters more than premium, and Florida gives you fewer ways to solve it than most states do.
Comparing private PPO coverage against the marketplace is often worth doing here for exactly that reason — not because private is automatically better, but because Florida’s marketplace PPO options are unusually thin.
Florida’s coverage gap
Florida has not adopted Medicaid expansion. The consequence is a gap that catches people who work but earn too little.
KFF estimates roughly 260,000 Florida adults sit in the coverage gap: earning too much to qualify for Florida Medicaid, but too little to qualify for marketplace premium tax credits. Florida Medicaid does not cover most adults without dependent children at any income level.
Two things are still worth checking before you conclude you are stuck. Whether your projected income for the coverage year clears the threshold once every source is counted — self-employment and seasonal work move people across that line more often than they expect. And whether children in your household qualify for Florida KidCare, which has its own separate eligibility.
The route most Floridians never get shown
Everything above is the marketplace, and it is where most Floridians look because it is the only thing anyone advertises. It is also community rated — a healthy 38-year-old in Tampa pays exactly what an unhealthy one pays.
Private coverage is medically underwritten: priced on your own health rather than the pool average. In Florida that matters twice over, because the marketplace here is unusually short of PPOs. A private plan frequently comes back cheaper and with a genuine nationwide network instead of a county-limited HMO.
It is not for everyone. Heavy subsidies beat underwriting every time, and anyone with a real health history wants guaranteed-issue coverage. But if you are healthy and paying full price on the exchange, you are covering someone else’s risk and there is a way out of it. See how the two compare.
What this means when you shop
Florida rewards actually comparing, more than most states, for a simple reason: with sixteen carriers and county-level availability, the default option is rarely the right one, and the gap between the cheapest plan and the right plan is unusually wide.
Three things are worth doing before you pick:
- Re-check your subsidy. It is calculated on projected income for the coverage year. If your income changed, last year’s answer is not this year’s.
- Verify your doctors by plan, not by carrier. The same insurer can offer several networks in one county, and being “in network with Florida Blue” does not mean in network with every Florida Blue plan.
- Price the total, not the premium. A 31.5% rate increase pushed many people toward bronze plans, where the deductible can undo the premium saving in a single hospital visit.
Brokers are paid by the carriers, not by you. The premium is identical whether you enroll on your own or with help, so the only question is whether you would rather have a second set of eyes on it.
General information as of September 2026. Not a quote, an offer of coverage, or a guarantee of eligibility. Marketplace rules, carrier participation, deadlines and subsidy eligibility change year to year and by county.
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