Affordable Care Act Crackdown

Trump administration officials plan to remove 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees from public healthcare exchanges. They allege the individuals were fraudulently enrolled in the program, or in some cases, simply do not exist. The canceled subsidy payments for these people is part of an administration crackdown on fraud, and would result in $2.2 billion in savings.

"We're actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them," said Vice-President JD Vance, who leads a government task force to eliminate fraud.

According to Vance, the cancellation of approximately 315,000 enrollments was done because the government was not checking whether people enrolled were eligible. Another 419,000 enrollments will get additional verification to make sure they are eligible for the benefit. Hence, the 760,000 is just a worse case scenario for those in the system.

The administration also announced a six-month suspension on new agents, and brokers who officials say commit a disproportionate amount of the fraud they uncovered. Roughly 19.2 million Americans are actively enrolled in ACA marketplace health plans as of early 2026. If one does the math, the cutoffs would be less than 4% of all recipients… assuming the worse case scenario.

The announcement is the latest in an initiative by the Trump administration to address fraud around the country, including in federal healthcare programs, which officials say is needed to rein in runaway spending and protect taxpayers. This is one area where I applaud Trump. Various audits of government spending consistently put fraud in numerous agencies as high as 20%.

Some healthcare policy experts, of course, are calling for more transparency on how the Trump administration decided to cut hundreds of thousands of enrollees. Well, of course they are. Less assistance and less enrollees means less money for the healthcare industry.

One of those people, Cynthia Cox, vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, said "I think there's no question that somebody who was fraudulently enrolled should have their coverage canceled…. however, I think the question is whether this was the appropriate process by which to identify fraudulent enrollees, and also whether all of them were indeed fraudulently enrolled." Sorry, Ms. Cox, but you’re the director, not the auditor. How do we know you’re not a part of the fraud?

The article then makes an attempt to marry the cutoffs to the difficult economy, especially stubbornly high inflation and rising healthcare costs. Once again, I’m sorry. Fraud and ineligibility need to end… no matter how good or bad the economy is. Theft is theft; it’s even worse when it’s at taxpayer expense.

How bad is the fraud? The Government Accountability Office conducted covert testing using fictitious ACA applicants enrolling in 2024 and 2025. A report revealed that the federal marketplace approved subsidized coverage for almost all of the GAO's 24 fake enrollees. That would suggest 20% fraud could actually be a low-ball number.

Naturally, Democratic lawmakers criticized the maneuver to remove enrollees from ACA coverage. So in other words, the Democrat party endorses fraudulent applicants. It’s sad when neither party can be trusted.

Source used; Associated Press

(c) 2025-Present