Health insurance in Georgia for 2027

The Cigna Group’s report for the second quarter of 2026 says it announced in April 2026 its “planned exit from the Individual and Family Plans medical business as of January 1, 2027.” (The Cigna Group is a separate company from the Cigna insurance companies that issue these plans, and it isn’t responsible for their financial condition or their obligations under their policies.) KFF’s tracker of insurer changes, updated October 7, 2026, says Cigna “will exit the 11 states in which it currently participates both on- and off-exchange,” and lists Georgia among them. In Georgia, CMS’s rate review site has a 2026 filing from Cigna HealthCare of Georgia and no 2027 filing from any Cigna company. Your Cigna plan runs through December 31, 2026. After that, whether you bought it through Georgia Access or straight from Cigna, you’ll need another company’s plan.

Who’s filed to sell for 2027. These are the nine companies whose 2027 Georgia individual-market rate filings are on CMS’s rate review site, as I read it on October 21, 2026. I’ve left out their requested prices on purpose: they’re requests, not approved rates. The middle column is CMS’s flag for whether a filing includes plans sold on the exchange, which in Georgia is Georgia Access. The last is whether Georgia Access’s own page on insurance companies, updated October 16, 2026, names the company in its table of 2027 insurers.

UnitedHealthcare of Georgia’s filing is flagged as including exchange plans, but Georgia Access’s 2027 list doesn’t name it, and KFF’s tracker lists UnitedHealth as leaving Georgia’s marketplace for 2027. If your plan is from UnitedHealthcare, read your renewal notice closely. The same page’s list of companies to enroll with also names Antidote, which KFF’s tracker lists as new to Georgia’s marketplace for 2027 and which has no filing on CMS’s site. CMS only lists filings that change rates, so a missing name isn’t proof either way. When I read CMS’s site again on October 31, 2026, it had marked all nine filings final.

What Georgia Access says happens next. Its renewal page says Georgia Access automatically renews the plan you have ahead of open enrollment and sends you a notice, then: “If your 2026 insurance company is not offering plans in your area for 2027, you will need to select a new plan.” So don’t count on being moved to another company’s plan. Pick one yourself, by December 15, 2026 for coverage that starts January 1.

If you miss December 15. Georgia Access lists “Your Georgia Access plan is discontinued” among the ways of losing coverage that can qualify you for a special enrollment period. You can use one if you lost coverage in the past 60 days or expect to lose it in the next 60, and you’ll need to give Georgia Access documents that show it. December 15 is still the simpler date to aim for.

If you bought your Cigna plan outside Georgia Access, the same end date applies to you. You can pick a new plan on Georgia Access or off it, but the tax credit is for plans you enroll in through Georgia Access.

Where I fit. Georgia Access is the state’s own marketplace, and you enroll there yourself at georgiaaccess.gov. I’m not a Georgia Access agent, so I can’t enroll you in a marketplace plan. My open enrollment checklist goes through how to check a marketplace plan’s costs, doctors and drugs before you pick one, and I can give you a second read on a plan summary you send me.

If you’re healthy and won’t get a tax credit, for example because your income is above four times the poverty line, a private short-term plan is one more thing to compare. It’s a health plan sold outside Georgia Access, for a set period. In Georgia, the ones this section describes come from a company I sell: National Health Insurance Company, under the marketing name Allstate Health Solutions, on either the Aetna Open Choice PPO Network or the Cigna PPO Network for Shared Administration. These aren’t Aetna’s or Cigna’s own plans. Aetna or Cigna supplies the network, and the insurance comes from National Health Insurance Company. Allstate Health Solutions says it’s part of The Allstate Corporation, which is a separate company from the insurers that issue these plans and isn’t responsible for their financial condition or their obligations under their policies. Each brochure’s cover calls the plan a LIFE Association member offering, so you’d join that association to get one (the brochures mention membership fees, so ask what membership costs and how it’s billed), and the brochures give the policy as certificate form NHIC STM 2018 ASSC. If you’re leaving a Cigna plan, ask before you buy whether the Cigna network on one of these plans will stay the same for your whole term.

How long one lasts. Each policy runs up to 364 days: “Maximum allowable policy period is 364 days,” in the brochures’ words. Bought on its own, the plan “is nonrenewable.”

Optional Benefits: a renewal option. If you add a renewal option when you first buy, the brochures say the plan “will be renewable up to 36 months so long as you maintain compliance with the plan provisions.” There’s an additional premium for the renewal option. It has to be chosen at purchase, and the deductible starts over with each new term.

Why a year and not three months. A federal rule written in 2024 limits these plans to 3 months, and 4 months in total with renewals. On August 7, 2025, the three federal departments behind it said they “do not intend to prioritize enforcement” of that limit until they write a new rule, and that states could take the same approach or use their own definitions. A proposed new rule has been under review at the Office of Management and Budget since May 30, 2026, and hasn’t been published. I couldn’t find a Georgia law that sets a limit of its own. So for now, how long a plan lasts comes from the policy itself, and a new federal rule could change that. The 2024 rule’s length limits applied only to policies sold on or after September 1, 2024; whether a new one would reach a policy you already have won’t be known until it’s published.

What they don’t cover, and other limits:

• Conditions you already have. In the brochures’ terms, a pre-existing condition is a sickness, injury or condition you got (or were told to get) medical advice, a diagnosis, care, treatment or a prescription for in the year before your coverage starts, or that gave you signs or symptoms in that year that reasonably should have, or would have, let a doctor diagnose it, or led an ordinarily prudent person to seek medical advice, whether or not it was diagnosed. A pregnancy that exists the day before your coverage starts counts too. The plan doesn’t cover them. Even with a renewal option, the brochures’ table leaves them uncovered for your first 12 months of coverage.
• A new plan counts today’s problems as pre-existing. If you apply for a new plan after one ends, the brochures say any sickness or condition that started under the old one “will be considered a pre-existing condition” and won’t be covered.
• A cap on what it pays. Each plan has a maximum it pays for the coverage period, set by the plan you pick: from $250,000 to $5 million in the brochures. With a renewal option, their table says that maximum doesn’t reset with each new term.
• Your health history. The brochure for the Aetna-network plans says they “are medically underwritten.” That means the insurance company usually looks at your health history and decides whether to take you, and at what price.
• A wait for sickness benefits. The Aetna-network brochure says sickness benefits start after 7 days, unless you apply more than 7 days before your plan starts. The Cigna-network brochure’s only waiting-period line, “No waiting period applies,” is a footnote on its prescription drug row, and it doesn’t say whether sickness benefits wait. Both plans use the same certificate form, so ask before you buy.
• Other exclusions. Among them: mental health and substance use treatment, applied behavior therapy or analysis (apart from a benefit for autism spectrum disorder), pregnancy and childbirth (apart from complications of pregnancy), and outpatient prescription drugs (apart from the drug copay some plans include). The full list is in the brochure and the certificate.
• No tax credit. The tax credit is for plans you enroll in through Georgia Access, and a short-term plan isn’t one.
• Ending one isn’t a qualifying life event. The brochures: “Termination of this plan is not considered a qualifying life event for the purposes of enrolling in an ACA-compliant major medical plan.” A qualifying life event is what lets you sign up outside open enrollment, so a short-term plan ending doesn’t, on its own, let you get a Georgia Access plan before the next open enrollment.
• They aren’t marketplace plans. Federal rules leave short-term plans out of the Affordable Care Act’s rules for individual coverage, and the Aetna-network brochure says they “are not Minimum Essential Coverage under the Affordable Care Act.”

These plans have exclusions and limitations, and rules about when a policy can be kept or when it ends. For costs and complete details of the coverage, call me or the insurance company. National Health Insurance Company’s home office is at 3300 Olympus Blvd., Ste. 400, Dallas, TX 75019, and its toll-free number is 1-888-781-0585. My comparison of Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare explains how these plans use Aetna’s and Cigna’s networks.

If you get sick while you’re on one. Without a renewal option, the plan ends with its term, and a new plan wouldn’t cover what started on the old one. With it, at extra cost, the plan can renew for up to 36 months, but its maximum doesn’t start over. Either way, a short-term plan ending doesn’t, on its own, get you onto a Georgia Access plan before the next open enrollment.

Who should look at one. A short-term plan is worth comparing if you’re healthy, don’t take regular prescriptions, and would pay full price for a Georgia Access plan anyway. Put it next to the lowest-priced bronze plan on Georgia Access, which says all its bronze plans are eligible for a health savings account. If you have a condition that needs care, or you’re pregnant or planning to be, a Georgia Access plan is the safer route.

Georgia Access’s renewal page gives November 1, 2026 as the day open enrollment begins, December 15, 2026 as the last day to enroll in a plan that starts January 1, 2027, and January 15, 2027 as the day open enrollment ends. Its instructions to insurers, updated August 10, 2026, give the open enrollment period as “11/01/2026 - 01/15/2027”, and its after-enrollment page says a plan picked December 16 through January 15 starts February 1.

A federal rule finalized in June 2025 would have shortened open enrollment on every marketplace, Georgia Access included. A federal district court set that part of the rule aside in June 2026; the government appealed, and the appeals court set argument for October 30, 2026. So treat January 15 as likely, not settled, and check georgiaaccess.gov before you plan around it. My 2027 open enrollment guide tracks the case.

The tax credit that lowers your monthly premium is still there for 2027, for plans you enroll in through Georgia Access. It’s for household incomes from the poverty line up to four times it. For 2027 coverage, four times the poverty line is $63,840 a year for one person, $86,560 for two, $109,280 for three and $132,000 for four. Above that, there’s no credit at all; that top limit came back when a temporary law ended with 2025. And starting with 2027, fewer people who aren’t U.S. citizens qualify: the credit is limited to U.S. citizens and nationals, green card holders, Cuban or Haitian entrants, and people here under the Compacts of Free Association.

Georgia hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. In August 2026, Georgia’s Department of Community Health wrote: “Georgia has declined to pursue full Medicaid expansion and must obtain legislative approval for any Medicaid expansion, consistent with a 2014 state law.” So Medicaid here covers set groups: children 18 and under, people who are pregnant, parents and caretakers with very low income, and people who are 65 or older, blind, or have a disability or need nursing-home care. The limit for parents is low: for a parent in a family of three, $551 a month, or up to $662 once a standard 5% allowance is counted, under the limits Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services has used since March 1, 2026.

That leaves a gap, because the tax credit starts at the poverty line. For 2027 coverage, the poverty line is $15,960 a year for one person, $21,640 for two, $27,320 for three and $33,000 for four.

Pathways is Georgia’s program for some adults in that gap. CMS’s approval of it ends December 31, 2026 unless it’s renewed, and Georgia has asked CMS to extend it; as of October 21, 2026, I haven’t found a decision. Its rules change on January 1, 2027. Pathways’ own page says what changes and who qualifies.

You can apply for Medicaid, Pathways and PeachCare for Kids through Georgia Gateway, the state’s application site.

PeachCare for Kids covers children through age 18 (until their 19th birthday) in families with income up to 247% of the poverty line; the dollar amounts are updated each year. A child can’t have other coverage or qualify for Medicaid; children whose family income is low enough for Medicaid go on Medicaid instead, from the same application. Some families pay a premium. There are no premiums or co-payments for children under six, and Georgia’s Department of Community Health says no family has to pay more than 5% of its yearly income in premiums and co-payments. Above PeachCare’s limit, your children can be on your Georgia Access plan, where the tax credit can help pay for their coverage too.