New dashboard tracks Kansas Affordable Care Act enrollment by legislative district, county

By:Morgan Chilson

Kansas Reflector

TOPEKA — A new dashboard tracks the number of Kansans enrolled in health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, offering data for legislators and others to understand the effects of policy changes, a health organization said.

The Kansas Health Institute designed the dashboard to create an easy way for people to access data and see how federal and state changes to marketplace health insurance affects enrollment, said analyst Kaci Cink.

The organization already had been maintaining maps to track ACA enrollment, but KHI wanted to break the data down not just to the county level but to legislative districts levels, as well, she said

"We've been doing maps for the marketplace for a long time, and we wanted to explore creating something that was a little bit more interactive and was also able to get down to legislative districts, the community level, your neighborhood essentially," Cink said.

The dashboard shows the percentage of people in a county, state Senate or House legislative district or federal congressional district enrolled in the ACA. By county, Hodgeman County has the highest percentage of enrollees with 21%, or 340 people, and Riley County has the lowest percentage at 3.3%, or 2,373 people.

Kansas' 4th Congressional District, which is served by Republican Rep. Ron Estes, has the highest enrollment among federal districts at 7.2%, or 53,958 people. The 1st District, represented by Republican Rep. Tracey Mann, is 5.5%, or 40,255 people.

The dashboard also compares the state by peer counties, showing the differences in population density between rural and urban counties through categories defined by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Cink said.

Linda Sheppard, KHI senior analyst and strategy team leader, said the organization shared the dashboard information with legislators so they know the number of people in their districts affected by ACA.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated premium help that many people were receiving to enroll on the ACA marketplace. Area health experts said 20% of Kansans enrolled in 2025 didn't re-enroll in 2026.

Sheppard said the state is seeing a further decrease in ACA enrollment as people are not paying their premiums, even though they were enrolled for 2026.

That information isn't included on the dashboard, because the federal government doesn't update enrollment data until the next open enrollment, for 2027.

"I think the expectation is that maybe for 2027 we'll see a more significant drop in that initial open enrollment period because maybe some of those people that figured out that they couldn't afford it anymore just won't enroll," Sheppard said.