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It is not clear from your initial post, do you both have an HSA? Did you both go through the HSA interview, in which you specified the type of HDHP coverage you have?

Generally, this question pops up when one spouse does not have an HSA so never tells TurboTax that he/she had HDHP coverage. So TurboTax misinterprets the answer to the question "What type of High Deductible Health Plan did [Name] have on December 1, 2022?" If you answer Self or Family, TurboTax thinks that you must have invoked the last-month rule in 2022, which required that person to maintain HDHP coverage for all of 2023 - and since that person didn't go through the HSA interview, it looks like their coverage "lapsed".

I agree that this is very confusing - the only thing I can say is that the preceding question was worse, "Did you use the last-month rule in the previous year?" (no, no one understood that question).

However, some people are supposed to answer Self or Family to the December 1, 2022 question, and your spouse is one of them.

You see (look at the Last-month rule on page 6 in IRS Pub 969), If you use the last-month rule, then you are allowed the full annual HSA contribution limit for the year no matter how few months you had HDHP coverage, so long as you had HDHP coverage on December 1, 2022 (for 2023 returns). 

The catch is that you have to keep the HDHP coverage for the entire next year, or you will be considered "lapsed" (technically, "failure to maintain HDHP coverage").

So you are thrown into an additional interview, which tries to find out if you really failed to maintain coverage and if so, how much you should be penalized. Note that another process is to determine how your annual contribution limit would have been had you not used the last-month rule.

Based on what you have said (spouse was under one HDHP coverage, then switched to another), it sounds to me that when you go through this extra interview, TurboTax will realize that you spouse did maintain HDHP coverage afer all - just under a different policy.

So please don't despair. Go ahead and answer "family" to the "What type of High Deductible Health Plan did [Wife's Name] have on December 1, 2022?" question, let it tell you that she has lapsed, then go through the following interview where TurboTax will ask you enough questions about 2022 and 2023 to realize that she hasn't lapsed at all.