HHS Halts Obamacare Subsidies for 189,000 Enrollees Found in Duplicate Plans or Listed as Deceased

WASHINGTON — The federal government will halt subsidy payments for 189,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees identified as duplicates or improperly enrolled in other government-sponsored plans or as deceased, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday. Officials said the move will prevent an estimated $738 million in payments this year.

Kennedy announced the action at a press conference in Washington, where officials from the Department of Health and Human Services and its Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services division said the 189,000 people were found through a review of death records and enrollment data.

“Taxpayers should not foot the bill for duplicate coverage or subsidies for people who have died,” Kennedy said. “HHS is identifying improper enrollments, stopping those payments, and making sure federal dollars support the Americans these programs were created to serve.”

CMS Deputy Administrator Peter Nelson said at the briefing that the government has already removed from Obamacare 58,000 people who already have Medicare, and ended 11,000 subsidized plans for people listed as dead, according to USNN News’s account of the briefing. People flagged as double-enrolled are notified and given 30 days to provide evidence to resolve the finding; the estates of people listed as deceased are also given 30 days to respond.

Officials stressed that many of the double-enrolled people do not know they are enrolled twice, and they do not lose insurance. They typically keep their Medicare, Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program coverage, according to the officials.

How the reviews work

Federal rules require health insurance exchanges to run periodic checks for people enrolled in both a subsidized marketplace plan and Medicaid, a process known as Medicaid/CHIP Periodic Data Matching. CMS says it also checks whether taxpayers are paying for marketplace plans for people who are deceased.

People whose records show Obamacare subsidies alongside Medicare or Medicaid coverage are contacted and given 30 days to dispute the duplicate coverage or cancel it. If they do not, CMS ends the subsidies for their Obamacare plan. The estates of people listed as deceased are contacted as well, and their Obamacare subsidy and plan are canceled if the record is not disputed within 30 days.

A second year of enforcement

The announcement marks the second year of the administration’s push on duplicate enrollment. HHS said the Trump administration restored enforcement in 2025, ending duplicate Obamacare subsidies for about 551,000 enrollees already receiving coverage under Medicaid. The agency said the checks have the potential to save taxpayers about $1.5 billion a year.

“When it comes to program integrity, the Biden Administration was sleeping on the job,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said. “They paused looking for duplicate Medicaid and Obamacare coverage for four years, creating a backlog of hundreds of thousands of duplicate enrollments. We’ve already saved nearly $6 billion, and we will continue to work hard to restore taxpayers’ confidence that the programs they fund are spending their hard-earned dollars wisely and efficiently.”

Reporting based on coverage by Reuters, HHS and USNN News.