Trump Administration Purges 750,000 over Obamacare Insurance Fraud Claims

Int'l Insurance Desk: The Trump administration has moved to purge hundreds of thousands of people from the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, arguing that fraud has long undermined the program known as Obamacare.

Vice President JD Vance announced this week that more than 750,000 enrollees were removed after officials concluded many were either ineligible or did not exist at all. He described the group as a mix of phantom names and real people who failed basic eligibility checks. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the cancellations, carried out at the end of August, affected roughly 315,000 policies covering about 760,000 individuals. An additional 419,000 enrollments remain under closer scrutiny. Officials estimated the action would save taxpayers $2.2 billion in improper premium subsidies.

According to the administration, the problems stem in large part from brokers who signed people up without proper verification. CMS identified nearly 1.2 million marketplace enrollees who lacked a Social Security number or immigration documentation. Health plans were asked to contact those individuals; those who failed to respond within 30 days lost coverage. Hundreds of brokers have already been suspended, and a six-month freeze on new broker applications is in place. Vance said the government had not previously been checking eligibility with sufficient rigor, allowing fraudulent or improper enrollments to accumulate.

The scale of the removals has drawn sharp criticism from the sponsored media wing of Democrats. Administration officials note that some enrollees were unaware they had been signed up, while others held employer coverage or earned incomes that should have disqualified them from subsidies.

The crackdown arrives as overall marketplace enrollment has already declined. The administration insists the latest cuts target only those who should never have been on the rolls. Further verification efforts continue, and officials have signaled more enforcement actions may follow as open enrollment approaches.