State public-option health plans expand but can’t fill gaps left by federal changes

NPR – Wednesday, February 18, 2026
By Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez

More than 10,000 people have enrolled in Nevada’s new public-option health plans, which debuted last fall with the expectation that they would bring lower prices to the health insurance market.

Those preliminary numbers from the open enrollment period that ended in January are less than a third of what state officials had projected. Nevada is the third state so far to launch a public option plan, along with Colorado and Washington state. The idea is to offer lower-cost plans to consumers to expand health care access.

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