RFK Jr. Cuts Obamacare Subsidies for 189,000 Enrollees, Citing Duplicate Coverage and Death Records
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The federal government will halt Obamacare subsidy payments for 189,000 enrollees flagged as duplicates, improperly enrolled in other government health programs, or deceased — a move Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Wednesday that prevents an estimated $738 million in payments this year.
At a press conference in Washington, Kennedy said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) identified the enrollees as having subsidized coverage through the Federal Marketplace while also holding duplicate Medicare, Medicaid, or Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) coverage — or as people who had died. The administration says it moved swiftly to cut the subsidies and stop taxpayer dollars from flowing to improper enrollments.
"Taxpayers should not foot the bill for duplicate coverage or subsidies for people who have died," Kennedy said, adding that the department is "identifying improper enrollments, stopping those payments, and making sure federal dollars support the Americans these programs were created to serve."
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz took aim at the prior administration, saying it "paused looking for duplicate Medicaid and Obamacare coverage for four years," creating a backlog of hundreds of thousands of duplicate enrollments. The administration claims it has already saved nearly $6 billion through its program-integrity efforts, with duplicate enforcement restored last year ending subsidies for about 551,000 enrollees who already had Medicaid coverage.
The action is part of a broader crackdown on improper enrollments in the federal health insurance marketplace. Last month, the administration canceled about 315,000 "unauthorized enrollments" affecting more than 760,000 people, returning an estimated $2.2 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies. CMS has also terminated more than 200 agents and brokers since January over marketplace violations, and temporarily suspended new registrations for agents and brokers lacking active exchange agreements.
The Affordable Care Act marketplace has been a political flashpoint throughout the year. While the administration frames the reductions as a fraud-and-waste cleanup, critics argue the aggressive enforcement — combined with rising premiums — is pushing legitimate enrollees out of coverage. Obamacare premiums surged this year, and new analyses warn they are likely to rise again in 2027.
The cuts come at a sensitive moment for health policy: with the marketplaces already shrinking and major insurers such as Cigna announcing their exit from the market next year, every enrollment enforcement action lands with outsized political weight. Whether the latest purge is remembered as taxpayer protection or as a coverage cut will likely depend on how many of the 189,000 turn out to be real errors — and how many were quietly eligible Americans caught in the sweep.
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