On January 1, congressional Republicans allowed the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credit — which lowered healthcare costs —  to expire, rather than voting to extend them. According to data released on January 28 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, there were roughly 1.2 million fewer enrollees compared to the same open enrollment period in the prior year.

Industry experts repeatedly highlighted how enrollment in the ACA suffered as premium costs rose. In total, analysts and insurers estimate “overall declines of about 20 percent, dropping to around 19 million from the 24 million who were covered under the A.C.A. last year,” according to The New York Times.

While mainstream reporting repeatedly underscored the scale of the losses, Fox News mentioned the blows to ACA enrollment only once in the months since CMS issued its first batch of enrollment data on January 28. The roughly 30-second mention aired on April 21 after a House Democrat pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the drop.

Fox's silence on ACA enrollment comes as no surprise. The network has established a pattern throughout the second Trump administration of repeatedly ignoring, downplaying, and distracting from rising costs caused by Republicans and Trump’s destructive economic agenda.

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream and Kinetiq video databases for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms “health,” “insurance,” “Affordable Care Act,” “ACA,” “Obamacare,” or “Obama care” or any variation of the term “Medicaid” within close proximity to any of the terms “coverage,” “sign up,” or “signup” or any variations of either of the terms “enroll” or “subsidy” and also within close proximity of any of the terms “drop,” “decrease,” “lapse,” “sink,” “tank,” “loss,” or “less” or any variations of either of the terms “reduce” or “few” from January 28, when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released numbers showing approximately 1 million fewer Affordable Care Act enrollees than the year prior, through May 18, 2026.

We timed segments, which we defined as instances when the Affordable Care Act's drop in enrollment was the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of the drop in enrollment. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed the drop in enrollment with one another.

We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a speaker mentioned the drop in enrollment without another speaker in the segment engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about the drop in enrollment scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We rounded all times to the nearest minute.