The Trump administration is removing hundreds of thousands of enrollees from Affordable Care Act plans, claiming that many were receiving subsidies they didn’t qualify for and that some did not even exist.The announcement is the latest effort by the administration to argue that fraud has inflated ACA enrollment, even as experts question the scale of the alleged fraud.Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz — who have teamed up on a broader push to root out fraud in government health programs — said Tuesday that roughly 750,000 people have had their ACA coverage canceled.
The administration did not provide details about who lost coverage or how those individuals were informed.The cuts, Vance said, would save U.S.taxpayers $2.2 billion.
“These programs are deserving, they are important, but they’re not going to exist unless we stop the fraud,” Vance said at a news conference.During the Biden administration, ACA enrollment increased from about 11 million to a record 24 million, when pandemic-era enhanced tax credits expanded who was eligible for subsidies.ACA enrollment declined by roughly 3 million people this year after those enhanced subsidies expired, making monthly premiums significantly more expensive for millions of people.In an interview with NBC News in March, Oz claimed that some of the enrollment increase — around 4 million to 5 million — has been driven by fraud, particularly by insurance brokers, who help people find and sign up for health plans.
He said some brokers enrolled people without their knowledge to collect commission fees from insurers.In other cases, Oz said, people’s incomes made them ineligible for receiving subsidies, they had mistakenly signed up for duplicate plans or they did not exist at all.“In fact, the fact that we have 23 million makes me think we have too many participants in the ACA,” Oz said at the time.“It’s too high of a number.”Oz reiterate...