Sherri Reeves is a 62-year-old retired teacher in Lexington, Mississippi. In January, her health insurance bill jumped from about $100 a month to about $500. She dropped her coverage.

"I couldn't afford that and my living situation, and my day-to-day," she told Mississippi Today.

She isn't alone. Enrollment in Affordable Care Act plans in Mississippi fell by about 70,000 people between February 2025 and February 2026 — a nearly 25% drop, according to federal data reported by Mississippi Today.

That happened because the extra tax credits that kept those plans affordable expired at the end of 2025. Congress had several chances to extend them. Every Republican Mississippi sends to Congress voted no — including the four who are asking for your vote this November: Cindy Hyde-Smith, Trent Kelly, Michael Guest and Mike Ezell.

As Mississippi Today columnist Bobby Harrison put it on Sunday, politicians count on voters never connecting a vote in Washington to the bill in their mailbox. So let's connect them.

The House: three chances, three no votes

Mississippi's three Republican House members voted the same way every time.

• December 17, 2025: House Republicans passed their own health bill, H.R. 6703. It did not extend the tax credits, which were due to run out two weeks later. Trent Kelly, Michael Guest and Mike Ezell all voted yes.
• January 7, 2026: After the credits had already expired, a petition forced the House to take up a bill to bring them back. All three voted no on bringing it to the floor. It came up anyway.
• January 8, 2026: The House passed a three-year extension of the credits, 230 to 196, with 17 Republicans joining every Democrat. Kelly, Guest and Ezell all voted no.

Seventeen Republicans crossed over. None of them were from Mississippi.

The Senate: two chances, two no votes

In the Senate, Cindy Hyde-Smith voted against the credits twice:

• June 30, 2025: On a procedural vote to let an amendment extending the credits go forward, she voted no. It failed, 47–53; it needed 60.
• December 11, 2025: With the credits three weeks from expiring, the Senate tried to take up a bill to extend them. A majority voted to move forward, 51–48, but it needed 60. Hyde-Smith voted no.

Mississippi's other senator, Roger Wicker, voted no both times too. He isn't on the ballot this year.

Harrison points out that even if both Mississippi senators had voted yes, the bill would still have come up short of 60. That's true. It's also why the House votes matter: the extension passed the House with Republican help, and Mississippi's three House members were not part of that help.

What it cost

Nationwide, enrollment in these plans fell from 22.1 million people in 2025 to 19.2 million in February 2026, according to KFF. KFF found people faced an average 114% increase in what they paid each month to keep the same plan. Many switched to cheaper plans with higher deductibles instead, and what enrollees actually paid still rose 58%.

Mississippi got hit harder than most. Its drop of nearly 25% is roughly double the national decline of 13%.

The people hit hardest are older adults who aren't yet on Medicare, like Reeves. Health policy experts told Mississippi Today that the loss of the extra credits hit adults nearing retirement age especially hard. And anyone earning 400% of the poverty line or more — about $64,000 a year for one person, per Harrison — now gets no help at all.

Many of these people had nowhere else to go. Mississippi is one of the states that never expanded Medicaid. Mississippi Today reported that roughly two-thirds of the people who first signed up for marketplace plans this year would have qualified for Medicaid if the state had expanded it. Without expansion, a subsidized marketplace plan was the coverage within their reach.

Part of a bigger pattern

This wasn't a one-off. We've tracked the 197 Republicans we track in both chambers who voted to spike your premiums and the Republicans who voted to let 2.6 million Americans lose coverage. And we laid out what Mississippi's Republicans in Congress are costing the state across health care, food aid and more.

What the votes show

Cindy Hyde-Smith voted twice in the Senate against extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits. Trent Kelly, Michael Guest and Mike Ezell voted for a House health bill that let them expire, then voted twice against bringing them back — even as 17 Republicans joined Democrats to pass a three-year extension. After the credits ran out, about 70,000 Mississippians left their plans, nearly one in four. Among them was a retired teacher whose premium went from $100 a month to $500.

Source

Politicians' superpower might allow them to avoid blame for rising healthcare costs — Bobby Harrison, Mississippi Today, September 27, 2026. Enrollment figures and Sherri Reeves' story: Health insurance costs leave older Mississippians without care — Mississippi Today, July 23, 2026.