The Trump administration has canceled roughly 315,000 Affordable Care Act exchange enrollments covering more than 760,000 people, a move federal officials say will return about $2.2 billion in subsidies to the government, according to a new CMS fact sheet reported by The Federalist.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the cancellations followed investigations conducted in coordination with insurance companies, which confirmed the enrollments were unauthorized — meaning the people listed on the plans could not identify themselves with proper documentation.
“Canceled approximately 315,000 enrollments covering over 760,000 individuals after confirmation that these enrollments were unauthorized,” CMS stated in its fact sheet.
Brokers Face Termination Notices
Alongside the disenrollments, CMS said it has sent 569 notices of intent to terminate Exchange Agreements to agents and brokers who submitted 2026 coverage applications without identifying applicant information, such as a Social Security number. Of those, 66 agents and brokers have already been terminated, and CMS indicated more terminations are likely as responses come in from the parties involved.
The agency also published an interim final rule — one that takes effect immediately — imposing a six-month moratorium on new registration of brokers and agents. CMS said the pause gives it room to roll out another round of program integrity measures aimed at preventing fraud by agents and brokers.
That moratorium does not apply in states that operate their own exchanges, which set their own rules for insurance brokers.
The broker community pushed back, arguing the freeze punishes innocent agents alongside bad actors, since no new broker can register until next February — after the open enrollment window for 2027 coverage closes.
CMS defended the measure with data showing new agents for the 2026 plan year had significantly higher rates of questionable enrollments. According to the agency, those agents had a 2.8-time higher rate of unresolved income verification issues, a 2.7-time higher rate of missing Social Security numbers, a 2.6-time higher rate of unresolved citizenship or immigration status verification issues, and a 1.4-time higher rate of dual enrollment in both Exchange coverage and Medicaid.
In CMS’s view, those figures suggest new brokers may be disproportionately enrolling ineligible individuals mainly to collect commissions — a pattern it cited as justification for the registration moratorium as a preventive step.
Questions About Reinstatements and Timing
While the enforcement action drew support from those who favor tighter program integrity, the announcement also stirred questions about when and why brokers are terminated — or reinstated.
A Government Accountability Office audit released last December addressed the issue directly. It noted that in October 2024, CMS suspended 850 agents and brokers from the federal Marketplace over a reasonable suspicion of fraudulent or abusive conduct tied to unauthorized enrollments or unauthorized plan switches. Then, in May 2025, CMS officials told GAO the agency had reinstated all of those suspended agents and brokers in order to better fulfill the agency’s statutory and regulatory procedures.
It remains unclear why CMS reinstated the brokers last May, and whether any of the reinstated brokers were among those who later received termination notices over the summer.
The reinstatements came during a stretch when the federal government was still struggling with program integrity efforts. The recent interim final rule noted that in 2025, CMS received roughly 300,000 complaints attesting to unauthorized enrollments or unauthorized plan switching. A separate GAO report released in July disclosed a total of 299,604 such complaints last year — up from 258,424 in 2024.
CMS said in the interim final rule that those trends have reversed in 2026. Still, given how persistently eligibility fraud persisted through 2025, The Federalist argued that CMS should clearly explain its reasoning behind last year’s broker reinstatements and this year’s subsequent terminations — and that if the agency doesn’t, Congress should press those questions on behalf of the American people.
A Broader Pattern of Concern
As last year’s GAO report also noted, 19 out of 20 fictitious enrollees were able to obtain subsidized coverage from the federal Exchange. The Federalist framed that figure as unacceptable to taxpayers, arguing that most ordinary Americans would object regardless of political party — and that Washington should keep digging into fraud and demanding accountability.
The administration’s latest actions are part of a broader push to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in the Obamacare Exchanges. For ordinary taxpayers in the heartland, as The Federalist put it, the natural question is why these steps weren’t taken sooner.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/10/02/trump-admin-cancels-2-2-billion-in-phony-obamacare-enrollments-and-brokers-who-facilitated-them/