The “family glitch” refers to the fact that from 2014 through 2022, when the affordability of an employer-sponsored health plan was determined, it was based on just the cost for the employee. The cost to add family members was not taken into consideration. But the affordability determination was then applied to all members of the family who could be added to the employer-sponsored health plan. A person is only eligible for premium subsidies in the exchange if they are not eligible for affordable employer-sponsored health insurance. So if a family’s employer-sponsored coverage offer was considered “affordable” (based on the cost to cover just the employee) and provided minimum value, the entire family was ineligible for subsidies in the exchange. It didn’t matter how much the employee would have had to pay to purchase family coverage. The family members were not eligible for exchange subsidies if the employee could get employer-sponsored coverage just for him or herself, for less than 9.61% of the household’s income in 2022 (this threshold is indexed annually; it’s 9.12% in 2023). As long as the employee’s portion of the premium is affordable, the cost for the family could have ended up being 25% — or more — of their household income and they still had no access to premium subsidies. They could either pay full price in the individual market, or pay whatever the employer required to cover the family on the employer’s plan, despite both options being financially unrealistic.