The floor is a dollar figure and it is printed in the Federal Register
One hundred percent of the poverty guideline was $15,650 a year for one person and $32,150 for a family of four in the 48 contiguous states, published by the Department of Health and Human Services at 90 FR 5917 on January 17, 2025[2]. Eligibility for 2026 marketplace coverage is figured against the guidelines issued in January 2025, not against a 2026 set, which is why the Kansas Health Institute’s brief on 2026 plans uses the same two dollar figures[3].
Below that line, the institute states the rule plainly: people under 100 percent of the federal poverty level are generally not eligible for financial assistance on the marketplace[3]. The line is not a wall. 2,693 Kansans with income under 100 percent of poverty selected a 2026 plan[4]. What routed them there is not in any document read for this piece. The institute’s own wording leaves room for more than one route, because what it rules out is the financial assistance and not the purchase[3].
| Household income | Plan selections |
|---|---|
| Under 100 percent of poverty | 2,693 |
| 100 to 150 percent | 104,730 |
| 150 to 200 percent | 29,670 |
| 200 to 250 percent | 16,277 |
| 250 to 300 percent | 13,134 |
| 300 to 400 percent | 14,154 |
| 400 to 500 percent | 2,789 |
| Above 500 percent | 4,503 |
| Not determined | 4,861 |
| All selections | 192,811 |
The ceiling is in a chart on a site that will not answer
The department’s eligibility guidelines set out four groups: children under age 19, expectant mothers, parents and caregivers of a child under 19, and people 65 and over together with people who have a disability[5]. The page lists no coverage group for an adult who is not a parent or caregiver of a child under 19, expecting, over 65 or disabled. That is the mechanism, and it is categorical before it is financial.
For an adult who is in one of those groups, the question becomes how much they may earn. The Kansas Family Medical Assistance Manual sets out the budgeting rules that answer it, section by section, and the KanCare piece in this section walks through them. The cached section carries no income standard of its own, no dollar figure and no percentage of poverty, and where it does name a threshold amount it sends the reader to the F-8 Kansas Medical Assistance Standards chart, which sits in the appendix of the state’s KanCare policy site[6].
That site returned HTTP 403 to every request made for this piece, over several paths and with and without a full browser identification. So the state’s own ceiling for parents and caregivers is not printed here, because the chart that carries it was not retrieved.
One published Kansas percentage does exist and it belongs to an institute rather than to the state. The Kansas Health Institute’s June 2025 projection draws its currently eligible parent group as parents with income less than 38 percent of the federal poverty level[1]. That is the boundary the projection was built on, printed as a population label inside a figure of projected Kansas adults aged 19 to 64, and it is not the state’s published eligibility rule. The document that would carry the rule is F-8, and the body that publishes it is the Division of Health Care Finance at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. A reader who needs the binding figure should ask them for it.
What the arithmetic looks like with one end missing
The gap is the space between a ceiling nobody here can print and a floor at $15,650. The population inside it can still be bounded from above, and the Kansas Health Institute is the only body publishing a Kansas estimate. Its June 2025 analysis counts 309,556 Kansas adults aged 19 to 64 with income under 138 percent of the federal poverty level, of whom 242,984 were insured and 66,354 were not[1].
The uninsured 66,354 split two ways in the same figure. 4,186 are parents who are already eligible for KanCare and not enrolled. The other 62,168 are not eligible now[1]. That second number is the closest thing to a count of the gap available, and it is not the same measure: it reaches up to 138 percent of poverty, well above the $15,650 line, so it includes people who are eligible for a marketplace credit and uninsured anyway.
The method matters as much as the figure. It is an institute analysis of IPUMS USA 2023 American Community Survey data and 2023 state administrative data, using the State Health Access Data Assistance Center’s health insurance unit definition of family[1]. It is modeled, not counted. The one hard count nearby is the Census Bureau’s, whose universe is the civilian noninstitutionalized population: against that universe 248,000 Kansans of all ages were uninsured in 2024, or 8.5 percent, in a table that publishes in thousands[7].
One more thing the table above shows about the shape of the market on the far side of the floor. More Kansans selected a 2026 plan in the single band from 100 to 150 percent of poverty, 104,730 of them, than in every other income band put together[4]. The marketplace here is largely a program for households sitting just above the line that the coverage gap sits just below.
One bill, by number
House Bill 2600 of the 2026 session was titled, in the Legislature’s own record, "Establishing the Affordable Healthcare for Kansans program to expand medicaid eligibility." It was introduced in the House on January 29, 2026 and referred to the Committee on Health and Human Services the following day. Between February 6 and April 9 it was withdrawn from one committee and referred to the other seven times, moving between Health and Human Services and Interstate Cooperation. It died in committee on May 5, 2026[8].
What such a bill would do to the rolls is estimated rather than known. In its June 2025 issue brief the Kansas Health Institute puts new enrollment at 120,157 people, 83,207 adults and 36,950 children, at an estimated ten-year net cost to the state of $75 million after federal match rates, incentives, new state revenues, administrative costs and offsetting savings[1]. The institute holds a position on the policy. Its arithmetic is usable here and its conclusion is its own.
The gap has a second address, which is the balance sheet of the hospital that treats somebody in it. That is a rural care subject rather than a coverage one, and it is covered in the next section along; the section index at Health for Kansas leads to both.