Kennedy says action will return approximately $2.2 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies
CMS, the federal agency that administers the marketplace, said it has created an anti-fraud coordination group to handle the matter. The agency said the group will meet regularly to coordinate enforcement and will continue working with health insurance companies to investigate potential fraudulent enrollments.
The cancellations were carried out as part of the work of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, according to CMS. CMS announced the cancellations and the new coordination group on Tuesday.
In a written statement, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy framed the action in budgetary terms. “We are shutting down unauthorized Marketplace enrollments and returning approximately $2.2 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies,” Kennedy said.
The cancellations are the most recent in a series of HHS actions this year that the department has tied to alleged fraud in government healthcare programs. HHS has previously characterized its enforcement push as ongoing, and the latest action is consistent with that stated approach.
HHS has also withheld funds from Democrat-led states — including California and Minnesota — because of alleged fraud in Medicaid and other programs. The department has tied those funding pauses to its broader fraud-enforcement posture, which the marketplace cancellations now extend to the Federal Health Insurance Marketplace.
The enrollments that CMS canceled were described by the agency as unauthorized. The affected population of about 760,000 people exceeds the 315,000 enrollment count.