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IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI)– About 25,000 Idahoans may be forced to give up their health insurance as federal subsidies expire, leaving many unable to afford sharply higher premiums.

According to a brief by KFF, those with higher incomes and insurance are not immune to these new, expensive medical costs, and 44% of adults in the U.S. say that it’s very or somewhat difficult for them to afford their healthcare costs.

Healthcare agents like Sandi Herrin, owner of Heritage Health Advocates in Idaho Falls, sees this issue firsthand.

“I’ve had more people upset and crying and literally I’m hugging people, trying to walk them through this process as they try to make those decisions. It’s something I’ve never experienced before,” Herrin said, “and there’s a trend happening where people are having to make a decision between health care and just cost of daily living, buying groceries, affording housing and paying their rent.”

In Idaho, many residents are already planning to drop their health insurance, particularly those under the Affordable Care Act.

According to USA Today, Idaho’s insurance enrollment officials fielded a surge of calls and online chats when the state kicked off enrollment on Oct. 15, and state officials project that 25,000 Idaho residents will cancel their health insurance because expiring federal subsidies will make them pay a larger share of the plan’s price tag.

One of the most vulnerable groups that may be affected to these ACA cost increases are older, retired Americans.

“The hard part is where you have a population of people who are not yet on Medicare. They’re not quite eligible, but they’re retired. So they’re bringing in maybe Social Security, using their pension to survive and to live. But they’ve got still think of health care because they’re not of Medicare age yet. And so we have to bridge that gap. And usually that’s done through the Affordable Care Act,”

As pandemic-era subsidies end, those who earn more than four times the federal poverty level must pay the entire monthly premium to maintain ACA coverage.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) – Local farmers could be receiving a post-holiday bonus, as the Trump Administration rolls out a temporary $12-billion Farmer Bridge Payment program.

Announced a week ago by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the one-time payments are being made in “response to temporary trade market disruption and increased production costs.”

“These relief payments are going to go a long ways to help farmers who are up against it right now financially. It’s really tough in farm country right now for a lot of crop farmers,” said Idaho Farm Bureau Federation spokesman Sean Ellis. “Almost all prices for crops that I can think of that we grow in Idaho are down and some of them are down substantially.”

“I’ll give you an example. What it cost for Idaho farmers to grow 100 pounds of russet potatoes right now is about $8 to $9 total. On the open market, they’re getting about $2. So that gives you an idea of how much and how far underwater they are,” he continued.

Eligible farmers include producers of “corn, wheat, chickpeas, lentils, mustard, peas, canola, safflower and barley,” according to a United States Department of Agriculture news release.

$1 billion of the $12-billion fund will cover payments for “specialty crops and sugar.”

The Trump Administration blamed farmers’ tight economic conditions on policies implemented by the Biden Administration that resulted in  “record-high input prices and zero trade deals.”

The deadline for farmers to verify their acreage for eligibility in the program is 3 PM on Friday, December 19.

“The plan we are announcing … ensures American farmers can continue to plan for the next crop year,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in a release. “With this program serving as a bridge to the improvements President Trump and Republicans in Congress have made, it will allow farmers to leverage strengthened price protection risk management tools and the reliability of fair trade deals so they do not have to depend on large ad hoc assistance packages from the government,” she continued.

Farmer Bridge Assistance payments will roll out on February 28, 2026. 

For more information on how to qualify, visit the USDA website or email farmerbridge@usda.gov.