Unemployed Sister Using Healthcare.gov instead of Medicaid - will she owe?
Posting on behalf of my sister who gets overwhelmed with this kind of thing - here's the situation:
My sister quit her factory job at the end of 2025 after saving up a good financial cushion, with the intent to move back to our home state and find a career she likes better. I helped her sign up for Healthcare.gov online - it said that since she had no income she'd qualify for Medicaid, but since she was intending to get a job later in 2026 we basically set her income at right above the poverty line so she wouldn't have to fool with that. (I'm self employed and so pretty well-versed with Obamacare, but have never navigated Medicaid). She signed up for a plan and got full subsidy coverage, owing $0 premiums. We figured that since she'd likely have a job with insurance again sometime in 2026 it'd be easier to just do it that way.
Flash forward to now and she still hasn't moved, and I'm starting to worry she won't get a new job this year after all (apparently her savings haven't run out and she's enjoying the break). She makes a tiny bit of money doing things like hobby Twitch streaming but it’s less than a couple hundred dollars a month.
That's fine, it's her life - but now I'm worried about this insurance thing. If she ends up staying unemployed all year, is she going to owe back money for having used Healthcare.gov instead of Medicaid?
She lives in Indiana, and when she does move it will be to Kentucky.
Any advice would be great - google has told me both "not to worry about it" and that "she'll have to pay back all the premiums" and I'd rather have human guidance at this point. Thanks!