At St. Mark’s Hospital, we care for Utahns from every walk of life — young families, retirees, small business owners, gig workers, students, and more. Our commitment is to serve all who walk through our doors, whether they have health insurance or not. Thanks in large part to Enhanced Premium Tax Credits, more Utahns have coverage today than ever before. But that progress is in jeopardy.
The Enhanced Premium Tax Credits have made health plans more attainable for individuals who purchase their own insurance through the Marketplace. Over 350,000 Utahns currently benefit from them. Unless Congress acts soon, the credits will expire at the end of 2025, and premiums could double or even triple for many families.
This is not a theoretical policy debate. It is a looming crisis. The average working family in Utah that relies on the Marketplace could see their annual health insurance premiums spike by thousands of dollars. For example, a family of four, earning $64,000 a year, would pay $2,500 more per year for health insurance without the tax credits. That is not sustainable for any family.
At St. Mark’s, we already see what happens when people are forced to go without coverage. They delay care. They skip preventive visits. And when they do come to us, it is often through the emergency room, when conditions have worsened, options are fewer, and the costs are higher for everyone. If these tax credits are allowed to expire, more Utahns will lose coverage, and these scenarios will become far more common.
According to the Commonwealth Fund, the economic impact goes even further. If these tax credits expire, Utah is projected to lose nearly 3,000 jobs and see a $335 million hit to our state GDP. About half of those lost jobs would be in the health care sector. The rest would come from across the workforce, underscoring how critical a healthy, insured population is to the strength and stability of our entire state’s economy.
Nearly 55,000 Utah small business owners and self-employed workers depend on Marketplace coverage to protect themselves and their families. These are not people looking for handouts. They are builders, creators, and contributors to our economy. The Enhanced Premium Tax Credits have helped them afford coverage while growing their businesses, hiring workers, and reinvesting in their communities.
This is about giving people a fair shot, and giving our health care delivery system the stability it needs to keep serving everyone. Letting the tax credits expire would reverse years of progress, forcing many families to choose between paying for coverage or going without. It would flood hospitals with delayed care, stretch emergency departments even thinner, and shift more costs onto insured patients and taxpayers.
We cannot afford that outcome.
I urge Utah’s congressional delegation — Sen. John Curtis, Sen. Mike Lee and our Representatives in the House — to come together in support of a straightforward solution: extend the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits.
This is not about politics. It is about people. It is about our patients, our neighbors, our local businesses, and our livelihoods.
Now is the time to act.
Matt Hasbrouck is the CEO at St. Mark’s Hospital. He served as an assistant administrator at St. Mark’s Hospital at the start of his now 14-year career with the hospital’s parent health system, HCA Healthcare.