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There are many ways Oregonians get health insurance. Though their ranks shrank this year, well over 100,000 still get it through Affordable Care Act plans—also known as Obamacare—which they have bought for years by shopping around on HealthCare.gov .
When open enrollment launches Nov. 1, these people will instead buy this ACA insurance on a state-specific website Oregon is launching, ExploreHealthOR.gov.
The Oregon Health Authority cites many advantages of this new setup—among them, better access to enrollment data, better coordination with other state programs, and flexibility to respond to the needs of Oregonians in particular.
But it has been less direct about a disadvantage: the fees.
The Oregon Health Authority says it cannot definitively say how the $35.60 per member per month fee it will charge health insurers to use its new website compared to the fees those insurers previously paid to sell Oregonians health benefits through HealthCare.gov.
But when WW asked insurers themselves, the answer was clear: anywhere from $7 to $11 more per person per month—about the cost of a Netflix subscription.
From a certain perspective, this is a drop in the bucket. By contrast, the standard monthly cost of a silver-rated Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon plan for a 40-year-old is set to jump in 2027 from $591 to $708, though the actual cost for many will be reduced by subsidies.
Still, the added costs from the fees are almost certain to get passed down to consumers—at least in part—in the form of slightly higher prices. And they are arriving in Oregon at a time when consumers are very sensitive to price.
As the New York Times and others have reported, costs are spiking nationwide across the health insurance market, and specifically in the Obamacare space. On Friday, the health policy group KFF published a study finding that premiums on benchmark Obamacare plans have increased 42% between 2025 and 2027.
The sharp increase is thought to be driven by various forces, including the ending of enhanced federal subsidies, rising health care costs, AI and—a self-reinforcing result of rising costs—healthier people deciding to forsake health insurance, meaning it becomes riskier to run a health insurance plan.
Oregon health officials know affordability is a major concern, says OHA spokeswoman Amy Coven, and she notes that the state’s new Explore Health website doesn’t tell insurance companies how to incorporate the fee into their administrative costs.
Lawmakers approved the Oregon-specific exchange in 2023, when health care costs were not going up as fast as they are today and Obamacare enrollment was on the rise—unlike today, when the program is in major flux nationwide and federal officials do little about it.
“Its unfortunate timing,” says Matthew Woodbridge, an independent insurance agent with offices in Salem and Woodburn.
Still he adds, the state had decided to make sure the fees are sufficient to produce funding for a viable product, and he agrees with the OHA that Explore Health will bring many benefits.
Obamacare plans are generally attractive to self-employed people and workers at small businesses that don’t provide insurance, who would otherwise fall into the gaps of the fragmented U.S. insurance system. Oregon has a relatively small proportion of people who get insurance through the Obamacare marketplace, in part, Woodbridge says, because the state has such expansive eligibility for the Oregon Health Plan, which has generous benefits and is free to use.
In accordance with the state law, the OHA is funding the marketplace—which it estimates will cost $93 million to launch and maintain for five years—through fees on insurers and other state programs. The agency projects the fee to go down in three years when one-time implementation costs are covered, as long as enrollment remains level or higher.
Participating in the Healthcare.Gov exchange was not free either; the feds took a big cut, and Oregon took a smaller one too.
But the new Oregon-only price is higher than the previous combined federal and state fees. The reason the OHA says it can’t definitively say how much more is that the federal fee got applied in complex ways.
Still, ask the insurers, and the answers are fairly straightforward.
The insurance company Bridgespan says it will pay about $7.40 more per member per month in Oregon under the new regime. Kaiser Permanente and Regence BlueCross Blue Shield of Oregon both say the increase for them is more like $11 per member per month.
In other words, these insurers will pay anywhere from $89 to $132 more per year to insure someone on Oregon’s ExploreHealthOR.gov marketplace than they did to participate in the federal HealthCare.gov one.
The calculation is a little wonky, but here is how Regence breaks it down. In 2026, the insurer paid $6.85 per member per month to Oregon plus a 2.5% federal fee to use Healthcare.gov to offer Obamacare plans.
It says this added up to $24.72 per member per month. Take the difference between that figure and the new $35.60 monthly assessment Oregon is charging, and you get the difference: $11.
