About 3 million fewer people have Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance now than did last year according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services that goes through February. Initial signup data from early in the year showed a drop of a little over 1 million people, but these latest numbers indicate that many who enrolled in an ACA plan for this year likely didn’t pay their premiums and have since lost their coverage. The Trump administration is attributing most of the drop in ACA enrollment this year to a reduction in fraud, but most experts said there’s no evidence of that — including Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms.“It's a simple economic fact that when you raise the price of a good or service, fewer people will enroll,” Corlette said.ACA premiums went way up for millions of people this year after Congress let the enhanced pandemic-era subsidies expire.“There are not as many people signing up, and then there are people who are re-enrolled automatically, but aren't able to pay the premium, so they'll be disenrolled,” said Lindsay Allen, an assistant professor at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine.And it’s likely people will continue dropping off as the year goes on — especially healthier people. Corlette said there’s already evidence that this steep drop in enrollment will lead to further increases in health insurance premiums next year.“It's early days yet,” she said, “but what we can say is that [according to] the initial rates that are coming in to state regulators, we're looking once again at double-digit rate increases.”Because, Corlette said, when insurance companies have a smaller pool of sicker people they have to cover, their costs go up. So, they raise premiums.