On 31 December 2025 a five-year experiment in American health policy ended on schedule, and the original Affordable Care Act rules — percentages, ceiling and all — came back into force the next morning. This article is the dated record of that change: what the enhanced subsidies were, what replaced them, and what the restored cliff costs at the exact dollar where it bites.

The timeline, dated

Every date in that table is a statute or an IRS publication, not a news cycle — which matters for the question will aca subsidies be extended past 2025. Extension bills were introduced and debated through 2025 and into 2026; none had been enacted when this article was verified on 23 October 2026. A proposal is a position in an argument, not a rule anyone can enrol under.

What the enhanced schedule actually was

For five years the applicable percentages ran 0% at the bottom of the band (the credit could cover the entire benchmark premium), 0–2% across 150–200% of the poverty level, 2–4% across 200–250%, 4–6% across 250–300%, 6–8.5% across 300–400%, and a flat 8.5% above 400% — where the credit simply continued, because there was no ceiling. Households remember those years accurately: contributions were lower, and the word “cliff” left the vocabulary. Both properties were the enhancement. Both are gone.

The same household, priced in both years

Hold the household constant and change only the rules. A family of four earning $65,000, measured for 2025 against the 2024 poverty guideline for four ($31,200), sat at 208.3% of the poverty level; on the enhanced table its expected contribution was 2.33% of income — $126.39 a month. The same $65,000 measured for 2026 (against the 2025 guideline, $32,150) sits at 202.2%, and on the restored schedule its contribution is 6.68% — $361.84 a month. Nothing about the family changed. The schedule underneath it did, and the contribution roughly tripled before premiums — which themselves rose about 26% on average for 2026 — are even counted. That is the arithmetic inside the phrase “the subsidies expired”, and it is why 2026’s 2026 federal subsidy program — the original ACA schedule, which is the programme in force — feels like a different system to the households who met the enhanced one first.

The cliff, priced at the dollar

The restored ceiling deserves its own arithmetic. Take the family of four with a benchmark premium of $1,450 a month. At exactly $128,600 of income — 400.0% of the poverty level — the 2026 contribution is 9.96% of income, $1,067.38 a month, leaving a credit of $382.62 a month. At $128,601, the credit is $0: one dollar of earnings removes $4,591.44 of annual help. Under the 2025 enhanced rules the same family at $128,600 (412.2% of that year’s guideline) paid the flat 8.5% — $910.92 a month — and kept a credit of $539.08; the concept of falling off the edge did not exist. Households anywhere near the 2026 line have legitimate levers — pre-tax retirement contributions lower the MAGI the cliff is judged on — and the ACA Subsidy Calculator models both sides of the line in seconds; its boundaries section prices the 138%, 150% and 250% lines the same way.

When does the Affordable Care Act expire?

The 2026 shock, measured

The expiry was forecast in dollars before it happened. KFF projected that if the enhanced credits lapsed and people kept the same plans, premium payments for subsidised enrollees would rise by an average of 114% — more than double — because the typical enrollee would face both higher premiums (benchmark premiums rose by an average of about 26% for 2026) and a smaller credit. Enrolment through the 2026 season, in the CMS snapshot figures checked for this article, held at scale — Texas alone recorded 4.17 million plan selections, the largest of any HealthCare.gov state. Selections, though, are not the same as paid, continuing coverage — the truer test is the effectuated-enrolment reports published through the year, which show how many households kept paying the new, higher bills after the first invoices arrived. Anyone citing a single January number for “what the expiry did” is working with half the evidence; this article will take the year’s figures over the season’s.

Who felt the restoration most

The restored schedule is not one change but three, and they landed on different households. At the bottom of the band, the 0% contribution became 2.10%: the poorest credit-eligible households, who could pay nothing toward the benchmark under the enhanced rules, now owe a small but real monthly amount — and their credit, being smaller, leaves a positive premium on plans that used to read $0. In the middle, contributions rose by roughly half to a full percentage point of income across the 150–300% range. And at the top, two changes compounded: the return of the 400% ceiling, and benchmark premiums that rose by about a quarter in a single year. The households with the largest dollar losses were not the poorest but the near-cliff and the older — a 60-year-old just above 400% in an expensive rating area faced the full age-rated benchmark, alone, for the first time since 2020.

The repayment uncapping, priced on one household

The other restored rule bites at tax time rather than at enrolment, and it deserves its own worked example. A family of four with a $1,450 benchmark estimates its income at $120,000 — 373.3% of the poverty level, inside the band. The expected contribution is 9.96% of income, $996.00 a month, so the household takes advance credit of $454.00 a month. Now suppose the year goes better than estimated and actual income lands at $140,000 — 435.5%, over the cliff. The final credit is not reduced; it is zero, and the entire advance — $454.00 × 12 = $5,448 — is repaid with the tax return. During the enhanced years, a statutory cap table would have limited that repayment for a household under 400%, and the cliff itself did not exist above it. For tax years after 2025, the caps are repealed along with the enhancement: §71305 removed the ceiling on repayment at the same moment the eligibility ceiling returned. High-income marketplace households now carry an uncapped, cliff-edged liability on every dollar of forecasting error — the strongest argument in this whole cluster for conservative income estimates and mid-year updates.

What to watch from here

Three things decide whether the cliff survives into 2027. First, Congress: extension bills exist as proposals, and a statute — not a headline, not a campaign promise — is the only instrument that changes the schedule; until one is signed, the 2026 rules in this article are the rules. Second, the IRS’s annual indexing: the applicable-percentage table is republished by revenue procedure each year, and the 2027 edition had not appeared in the IRS listings searched when this article was prepared in October 2026 — when it lands, this page’s figures will be re-verified against it before a single number changes. Third, the states: several have debated or built their own subsidy wraps and enrolment supports, and a state programme layered over the federal floor is a live possibility in a way it was not during the enhanced years. Watch all three in that order — statute, table, state — and be suspicious of any source that announces the outcome of the first while it is still being argued about.

It doesn’t — and separating the two expiries is this article’s whole point. What expired on 31 December 2025 was a temporary enhancement layered on top of the ACA for 2021–2025. The Act itself, its marketplaces, its credit, its Medicaid expansion and its consumer protections carry no sunset; is obamacare still in effect has the same answer in 2026 as in 2016: yes, in its original form. What households lost was generosity, not the programme. Planning on the rules in force — the 2026 schedule, the cliff, uncapped reconciliation — while watching Congress argue about changing them is the only position the facts currently support.

Sources: American Rescue Plan Act §9661 (enhanced applicable percentages, 2021–2022) and Inflation Reduction Act §12001 (extension through 2025); Public Law 119-21 §71305 (repayment-cap repeal, tax years after 2025); IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-25 (restored 2026 schedule, 2.10%–9.96%); HHS poverty guidelines for 2024 and 2025 (Federal Register) for the two years’ measurements; KFF analysis of 2026 rate filings (average benchmark premium increase ≈26%; projected average premium-payment increase of 114% for subsidised enrollees if the enhanced credits expired); CMS 2026 open-enrolment snapshot (Texas: 4,172,233 plan selections). Extension status stated as of verification on 23 October 2026: no extension enacted.