From 2026 the premium tax credit ends at 400% of the federal poverty level — $62,600 for a household of one. A dollar under it, a 64-year-old pays $6,235 a year toward the benchmark plan and the credit covers the rest. A dollar over, they pay all of it.
What that dollar costs depends almost entirely on where they live: $24,581 in West Virginia, $4,707 in New Hampshire. Same income, same rules, same age.
Benchmark is the second-lowest-cost silver plan — the one the credit is measured against — for a single non-smoker, per rating area. States are ordered by what the cliff costs.
| State | Rating areas | Benchmark / month | Credit lost / year |
|---|---|---|---|
| West Virginia | 11 | $2,217–$2,757 (median $2,568) | $24,581 |
| Wyoming | 3 | $2,412–$2,592 (median $2,519) | $23,998 |
| Alaska | 3 | $2,356–$2,478 (median $2,407) | $22,645 |
| Arkansas | 7 | $1,817 | $15,567 |
| Nebraska | 4 | $1,507–$1,959 (median $1,689) | $14,033 |
| Tennessee | 8 | $1,536–$1,863 (median $1,661) | $13,694 |
| Kansas | 7 | $1,360–$1,769 (median $1,651) | $13,572 |
| Florida | 67 | $1,342–$2,999 (median $1,641) | $13,456 |
| Delaware | 1 | $1,624 | $13,250 |
| Louisiana | 8 | $1,319–$1,724 (median $1,607) | $13,047 |
| Arizona | 7 | $1,054–$2,163 (median $1,569) | $12,596 |
| Texas | 27 | $1,323–$2,171 (median $1,568) | $12,578 |
| Missouri | 10 | $1,248–$1,856 (median $1,563) | $12,524 |
| North Carolina | 16 | $1,281–$1,983 (median $1,514) | $11,932 |
| Mississippi | 6 | $1,414–$1,607 (median $1,506) | $11,835 |
| Utah | 6 | $1,163–$1,836 (median $1,495) | $11,706 |
| Wisconsin | 16 | $1,236–$1,719 (median $1,472) | $11,430 |
| Montana | 4 | $1,169–$1,605 (median $1,417) | $10,771 |
| Oklahoma | 5 | $1,325–$1,605 (median $1,336) | $9,801 |
| South Carolina | 46 | $1,082–$1,560 (median $1,306) | $9,436 |
| Hawaii | 1 | $1,275 | $9,063 |
| South Dakota | 4 | $1,207–$1,817 (median $1,259) | $8,869 |
| Oregon | 7 | $1,198–$1,419 (median $1,257) | $8,849 |
| Ohio | 17 | $1,134–$1,390 (median $1,233) | $8,559 |
| North Dakota | 4 | $1,071–$1,417 (median $1,171) | $7,818 |
| Michigan | 16 | $911–$2,136 (median $1,131) | $7,332 |
| Iowa | 7 | $1,063–$1,217 (median $1,121) | $7,213 |
| Indiana | 17 | $1,047–$1,211 (median $1,116) | $7,162 |
| Alabama | 13 | $876–$1,011 (median $951) | $5,176 |
| New Hampshire | 1 | $912 | $4,707 |
The figure above is one household size at one age, at exactly the cliff. A real plan sits somewhere near it, with a conversion or a capital gain deciding which side. The planner runs that with your income, your state and your assumptions, and shows the year it happens.
Run it with your numbersSecond-lowest-cost silver plan, individual non-tobacco rate, per rating area; the state figures are the low, median and high across that state's rating areas.
Computed from the CMS Health Insurance Exchange Public Use Files (Rate PUF and Plan Attributes PUF), plan year 2026. Not published by CMS and not CMS data — CMS's user agreement asks that altered data not be presented as theirs.
Not every state is here. State-Based Exchanges that do not use the federal platform — including California, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Colorado and New Jersey — publish no data here.
CMS updates the plan-year 2026 files until open enrollment, and they may differ from HealthCare.gov.
Plan year 2026. Rebuilt from source with scripts/build_slcsp.py.
This is a projection under stated assumptions — not financial or tax advice.