White House to Strip 750,000 People From Obamacare Rolls

The Trump administration will remove roughly 750,000 people from Obamacare plans on grounds that they were fraudulently enrolled, Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday.

Vance, speaking at a press conference in the White House complex, said officials would also conduct "additional verification" on about 419,000 more people. The administration is simultaneously suspending some brokers who sell Affordable Care Act coverage, accusing them of responsibility for thousands of fraudulent enrollees — including some who did not exist.

"These programs they are deserving, they're important, but they're not going to exist unless we stop the fraud," Vance said. "We are actually making sure that people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them. Amazingly we weren't doing that before."

Vance put the projected savings at $2.2 billion in taxpayer funds. That figure could not be immediately verified.

Health insurers took the hit in Tuesday trading after early reports of the cuts. Centene Corp. fell as much as 3.9%. Molina Healthcare Inc. dropped as much as 3.5%. Elevance Health Inc. slipped as much as 1.9%, and UnitedHealth Group Inc. declined as much as 1.4%.

The move lands on contested political ground. Conservatives have long claimed the Affordable Care Act markets are rife with fraud. Opponents call those accusations a smokescreen for kicking people off the program. The Trump administration has already rolled back several policies that made enrollment easier.

The marketplace itself is shrinking. Enrollment in Obamacare markets has dropped by millions since Republicans in Congress allowed Covid-era subsidies to expire, pushing premium payments sharply higher for many enrollees.

The timing compounds the pressure. Enrollment for the federal Obamacare marketplace opens Nov. 1, and shoppers are likely to see premium spikes before they sign up. Rising affordability concerns now loom over the program just as the midterm elections approach, and insurers dependent on exchange revenue face a smaller, riskier pool of customers heading into 2027.