Short-Term Health Insurance Calculator

What short-term health insurance actually is, and where it is not for sale

Short-term, limited-duration health insurance (STLDI) is medically underwritten temporary coverage, originally designed as a true stopgap between other health plans. It is fundamentally different from an ACA marketplace plan: insurers can ask about your health history and deny you outright or exclude a pre-existing condition from coverage, plans do not have to cover the ACA's essential health benefits (maternity care and prescription drug coverage are common gaps), and insurers can cap total payouts in ways ACA-compliant plans cannot.

That flexibility is exactly what keeps premiums lower than a marketplace plan, and exactly why it is a poor fit if you have an ongoing health condition.

A meaningful number of states do not allow it at all, or regulate it so heavily that no insurer actually offers it there. California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington currently fall into this category, for a mix of reasons: some states banned the product outright by statute (Illinois's ban took effect in 2025), others require short-term plans to meet ACA-style essential-health-benefit and guaranteed-issue standards that make the product commercially unworkable for insurers to offer (Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington).

This list shifts over time as state law changes and insurers enter or exit state markets, so this calculator checks your state directly rather than showing a cost estimate where there is no legal product to price.

How long a short-term plan can actually run is unusually unsettled at the moment. A federal rule that took effect in September 2024 capped new short-term plans at a 3-month initial term and 4 months total including renewals, reversing a more permissive 2018 rule that had allowed up to 364 days initially and 36 months with renewals.

In August 2025, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury announced they would not enforce the 2024 rule while new rulemaking is developed. A replacement rule was expected around August 2026 but had not been published as of September 2026.

In practice this means the real-world maximum duration you can buy depends on what your state and your chosen insurer currently allow, not a single fixed federal number, confirm the actual term length being offered before you buy.

Cost depends heavily on age and health status. National estimates for a healthy non-smoker with a mid-range ($5,000) deductible run roughly $75/month in your late 20s, climbing toward $175/month in your late 40s and $315/month or more by your late 50s and early 60s, though these are broad averages, not a quote, since short-term insurers do not publish public rate tables the way ACA marketplace plans do.