Connecticut: Access Health CT announces deadline extension due to outage; 141K enrollees so far; emergency subsidies on the way

Three important news items out of Connecticut today:

First, via Access Health CT:

HARTFORD, Conn. (December 16, 2025) — Access Health CT (AHCT), Connecticut’s official health insurance marketplace, experienced intermittent website outages on Monday, December 15, 2025 that impacted customers who wanted to enroll by that date to have coverage starting January 1, 2026. The website has been fully restored and is now available for eligible Connecticut residents to enroll in coverage.

“We understand how important access to health coverage is for our customers and yesterday’s website outage added stress and frustration for many customers,” said James Michel, Chief Executive Officer of Access Health CT. “We take responsibility for that disruption and apologize for the inconvenience it caused. We want to assure anyone affected that we are committed to making this right. Customers can still enroll for coverage starting January 1, 2026 by calling our call center by December 20, 2025 where our trained staff will provide personalized assistance to ensure no one is left without coverage.”

Approximately 2,400 customers who called the call center but were unable to enroll will receive a call back from the call center and the opportunity to enroll in coverage with a January 1, 2026 effective date.

Customers who tried but were unable to successfully enroll online can call the call center by December 20, 2025 to enroll in coverage with a January 1, 2026 effective date.

To get help over the phone, customers can contact the call center at 1-855-805-4325, Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Customers who are deaf or hearing impaired may use TTY at 1-855-789-2428 or call with a relay operator. Help is available in more than 100 languages.

Brokers can also help customers secure coverage with a January 1, 2026 effective date. Customers working with brokers should contact their broker and enroll by December 20, 2025 for coverage starting January 1, 2026.

Second, via Access Health CT's Open Enrollment dashboard, it looks like they had 141,083 total QHP selections as of the 12/15 deadline. This is around 93% of their total 2025 OEP enrollment of 151,151. However, I don't know if the 141K figure is from before or after the actual midnight cut-off for January plan selections (and of course the server outage & 5-day extension announced above makes this a bit fuzzier as well).

Finally, as I noted yesterday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has announced that Connecticut will be joining several other states in providing emergency state-based supplemental subsidies to backfill a portion of the lost federal tax credits:

Connecticut will spend $70 million to partly offset the looming loss of $295 million in enhanced federal tax credits that subsidize health insurance premiums for tens of thousands of residents under the Affordable Care Act, Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday.

Using emergency authority granted him by the General Assembly in special session last month, the governor announced the commitment minutes after the U.S. Senate failed to advance either a Democratic proposal to extend the credits or a Republican alternative.

“This is a one-year fix,” Lamont told reporters in a hastily called press conference outside his office at the state Capitol. “We’ll be able to mitigate the pain coming out of the confusion in Washington.”

The state money is expected to keep premiums stable for singles earning up to $56,000 annually and for families of four earning up to $128,000, Lamont said.

...“We’re also working with OPM and Access Health to see if we can find a partial subsidy for folks earning a little bit more than that, say $75,000 for a single and $160,000 for a family of four,” Lamont said.

The rest of the article makes it clear that the exact details of the state subsidies including how they'd be allocated, whether they'd be made retroactively and so on are still being worked out, but the bottom line is that this will be a godsend to thousands of Connecticut enrollees.

$70 million would be around 24% of the lost federal tax credits, so it's not a panacea, but it's still a hell of a lot better than nothing, especially considering that Connecticut's average premiums will be the 5th highest nationally in 2026.

Based on the current 141,000 enrollee figure, that would work out to around $500 apiece, although as Lamont said, not everyone would be eligible and there will likely be a "tiered" formula from lower to higher income levels.