Self-Employed Health Insurance for 2027: Is a Bronze Plan With an HSA the Better Buy?

Is a bronze plan with a health savings account the better buy for your 2027 self-employed health insurance? For a healthy owner-operator who earns too much for a premium subsidy, it can be. You pay less in premiums, and since 2026 every bronze plan sold through the Marketplace lets you open an HSA and deduct up to $4,500 a year. The trade-off is a bigger bill in a bad year. So the answer depends on how much you’d keep from lower premiums and the tax break, compared with how much more you could pay out of pocket.

Open enrollment for 2027 coverage runs from November 1, 2026, to January 15, 2027. Sign up by December 15 if you want coverage from January 1. Here is how the choice works for a self-employed contractor with no employer plan, and how both the premiums and the HSA come off your taxes.

The pieces: Marketplace, bronze plans and HSAs

The Health Insurance Marketplace is the government-run store for individual health plans. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services runs HealthCare.gov for most states, and some states run their own exchange. Buying there is optional, but it’s the only place you can get the premium tax credit, the federal subsidy for people under the income cap. Plans come in metal tiers. Bronze has the lowest premiums and the highest deductibles.

A health savings account (HSA) is a tax-advantaged account under section 223 of the tax code. You put money in, deduct it, and spend it tax-free on medical bills. Whatever you don’t spend stays yours. You can only contribute while you’re covered by a high-deductible health plan. That used to rule out most Marketplace bronze plans, because they didn’t meet the IRS deductible tests.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the federal tax law signed in July 2025 as Public Law 119-21, changed that from January 1, 2026. It treats every bronze and catastrophic plan available as individual coverage through an Exchange as HSA-compatible, the IRS confirms. A bronze plan bought off-Exchange also counts if the same plan is sold on the Exchange. A plan bought through a small-employer SHOP generally doesn’t.

The 2027 numbers that matter

• HSA contribution limit: $4,500 for self-only coverage and $9,000 for family coverage, under Rev. Proc. 2026-24, the IRS’s yearly inflation update. At 55 or older, you can add $1,000.
• Out-of-pocket ceiling: no Marketplace plan can make you pay more than $12,000 a year for yourself, or $24,000 for a family, in covered costs. A bronze plan can sit close to that cap. It still counts for an HSA, even though it’s above the usual $8,700 IRS limit for high-deductible plans.
• The subsidy cliff: the premium tax credit stops at 400% of the federal poverty line. For 2027 coverage that’s $63,840 for a single person and $132,000 for a family of four in the lower 48 states and DC, based on the 2026 poverty guidelines.

The larger credits that ran from 2021 to 2025, with no 400% cap, expired at the end of 2025. As of mid-October 2026, we found no law that brings them back for 2027, and the IRS’s 2027 credit table stops at 400%. The House passed an extension bill in January, but it hasn’t become law. If Congress acts after the November election, the numbers below will change, so check again before you pick a plan.

Bronze with an HSA against a silver plan: an example

Take a hypothetical electrician in Texas: 45, single, no employees, with about $85,000 of net profit. That’s above the $63,840 cliff, so no tax credit applies. The two plans below are illustrations, not quotes. Real 2027 prices won’t appear until window shopping opens on HealthCare.gov. For scale, the average 2026 bronze premium in HealthCare.gov states was $658 a month before credits, across all ages.

Here’s how the rows work. Premiums are deductible on both plans, so at a 22% federal rate the bronze premiums cost $4,867 after tax and the silver $6,552. The $4,500 HSA deposit saves another $990 in federal tax. That money is still yours, so we count only the tax saved. In a healthy year, bronze comes out about $2,675 ahead. In a year when you hit the out-of-pocket maximum, bronze costs $1,325 more. State income tax would widen the bronze advantage in states that have one.

The silver plan’s lower maximum is what makes the bad year cheaper. Swap in plans with a smaller gap between the two maximums and bronze can win in both years. That’s why the comparison is worth running with your real plan options.

If your income is under the cliff

Below 400% of the poverty line, the arithmetic shifts. The premium tax credit is a fixed dollar amount, worked out from the second-cheapest silver plan in your area and the 2027 percentage table. Apply that same credit to a bronze plan and the premium can drop close to zero. In 2026, people getting the credit paid an average of $57 a month for bronze in HealthCare.gov states, according to CMS enrollment data.

Your income estimate carries more weight from 2026 on. The Marketplace pays the credit in advance, based on what you expect to earn, and you settle up on Form 8962 when you file. If you earn more than you estimated, the cap on repaying the excess is gone, according to the IRS. Go over 400% and you repay all of it.

For a contractor whose year depends on storms, permits or one big commercial job, that matters. Estimate from last year’s numbers and this year’s booked work, and update the Marketplace when a big job lands. Then make sure your quarterly estimated taxes allow for any repayment.

How the deductions work on your return

The two deductions go in different places, and neither goes on Schedule C.

• Premiums go on Schedule 1, line 17, as the self-employed health insurance deduction under section 162(l). You use the Form 1040 worksheet or Form 7206. The deduction can’t exceed your net profit from the business, minus the deductible half of your self-employment tax and any SEP, SIMPLE or solo 401(k) contributions for that business. It doesn’t reduce self-employment tax.
• HSA contributions go through Form 8889 to Schedule 1, line 13. You don’t need to itemize. You can’t use HSA money to pay the Marketplace premiums themselves.

Watch one exclusion. You lose the premium deduction for any month you could have joined a subsidized employer plan, including your spouse’s, even if you didn’t enroll. Being covered by a spouse’s regular employer plan would also stop your HSA contributions. If you’re getting a credit too, the deduction and the credit affect each other, and IRS Publication 974 explains how to work out both. Our contractor tax deductions list covers the rest of your write-offs.

When you hire a crew

None of this covers employees. Once you have a crew, a QSEHRA or an ICHRA, which CMS now calls a CHOICE arrangement, lets you reimburse their own Marketplace premiums tax-free. Our guide to health reimbursement for a small crew explains both. Pension choices work the same way, and our retirement plans comparison shows how those contributions also lower the cap on your premium deduction.

A decision rule for this open enrollment

Before December 15, work out two numbers for the plans in your county. First, the yearly premium difference after your tax rate, plus the tax you’d save by funding the HSA. Second, the difference between the two out-of-pocket maximums. If the first number is bigger, take the bronze plan and fund the HSA, because you come out ahead even in a bad year. If the second is bigger, bronze only wins in a healthy year. Then the question is whether you could cover that worst-case gap from savings without hurting the business.