Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force is preparing to remove hundreds of thousands of allegedly fraudulent enrollees in Obamacare exchange health insurance plans as part of the Trump administration’s push against waste, fraud, and abuse in entitlement programs.
Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz are set to announce the cancellation of subsidy payments for roughly 760,000 enrollments deemed unauthorized or fraudulent, the Wall Street Journal reported, saving an estimated $2.2 billion in taxpayer funds.
The purge is the largest enforcement action from the White House task force to eliminate fraud since the project was created by President Donald Trump via executive order in March. The Washington Examiner asked the vice president’s office and the CMS for comment.
The enforcement action primarily targets people who are unaware that they are in the program or are ineligible for subsidized care because they earn above 400% of the federal poverty level, or roughly $62,000 per year for a single person.
Enrollment in federally subsidized insurance plans created under Obamacare more than doubled during the Biden administration, growing from 10 million to 22 million enrollees in 2024.
The rapid enrollment growth was due in large part to Democrats expanding premium subsidies for Obamacare plans regardless of income during the COVID-19 pandemic, including $0 premium plans for certain income levels. Those enhanced premium subsidies expired at the end of 2025.
Republicans also accuse Biden administration health officials of being too lax on other routine program integrity measures by expanding self-attestation of income, lowering pre-enrollment verification standards, and encouraging automatic re-enrollment in plans.
Republicans and fiscal conservative health policy groups have estimated that millions of enrollees gained during the Biden administration either did not meet eligibility criteria or were phantom enrollees, meaning that they either do not exist or had no knowledge of their enrollment in Obamacare insurance programs.
A report from the Department of Health and Human Services in June estimated that nearly half of enrollment in Obamacare exchange plans from 2021 to 2024 is suspected to be improper, fraudulent, or phantom.
The report found that, despite other enforcement actions from the Trump administration, 2.6 million improper and phantom enrollees still existed in the program, including about 1 million enrollees without valid Social Security numbers.
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Administration officials are also planning to cut off licenses for hundreds of insurance brokers and agents who sign people up for Obamacare health insurance plans and issue a nationwide moratorium on new agents and brokers.
The CMS plans to terminate nearly 470 agents, in addition to the 66 already eliminated from the system.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
