JD Vance says White House is stopping Obamacare enrollment for 750K people over fraud concerns

WASHINGTON, DC: Vice President JD Vance announced that a fraud task force he leads has removed more than 750,000 people from the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplaces, accusing them of receiving premium subsidies they were not eligible for or, in some cases, of not existing at all.

Vance said the Trump administration is also conducting additional verification on approximately 419,000 other enrollees.

JD Vance’s team reviews ACA enrollee eligibility

“We are stopping Obamacare enrollment for about 750,000 people, 750,000 people who we believe are fraudulently enrolled in the program. That’s number one. The second thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to do some additional verification,” Vance said.

The purge is the latest and largest operation by Vance’s anti-fraud task force, which has increasingly focused on federal health programs in recent months.

The task force has also been involved in withholding billions of dollars in Medicaid funds from Minnesota and California over concerns about inadequate fraud protections.

Tuesday’s purge marks the clearest indication yet that Vance is focusing on the ACA itself. Vance said officials expect most of the 419,000 people under review to be fraudulently enrolled.

He said the verification process would confirm whether enrollees are legal residents of the United States and whether they meet the income threshold requirements to receive Obamacare benefits.

“We’re going to make sure that they’re, first of all, legal residents of the United States of America, and second of all, we’re going to make sure that they actually meet the income threshold requirements in order to receive these Obamacare benefits,” Vance said.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in partnership with the task force, requested that health plans verify the eligibility of nearly 1.2 million people who enrolled through a broker and did not provide a Social Security number or immigration documents, according to a CMS representative.

This list was further narrowed to include people who had not filed insurance claims, had no history of communicating with their insurance company, and had their premiums fully subsidized by government funds.

Enrollees were given 30 days to confirm their eligibility with their insurance company. Those who were identified and failed to respond had their coverage canceled.

Experts challenge Vance’s ACA fraud review process

Cynthia Cox, a 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,” adding, “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.”

At Tuesday’s press conference, Vance referred to some enrollments that lacked Social Security numbers or immigration documentation.

The price of ACA insurance has skyrocketed for many Americans during Trump’s second term, after Republicans opposed extending Covid-era subsidies that had helped offset health insurance costs for most enrollees during Joe Biden’s presidency.

Richard E Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, said, “Republicans have already created the worst healthcare crisis ever, but every decision by the Trump Administration is designed to keep making it worse.”