On October 14, 2026, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced it has ended Advance Premium Tax Credits for roughly 189,000 people enrolled in subsidized Federal Marketplace plans who also had Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP coverage, or who were deceased. CMS estimates the action will save taxpayers approximately $1.5 billion over the next year. This is the second year of restored enforcement. In 2025 the same process ended duplicate subsidies for about 551,000 people already on Medicaid; combined integrity work has now saved nearly $6 billion.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stated the principle clearly: “Taxpayers should not foot the bill for duplicate coverage or subsidies for people who have died.” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz noted that the Biden Administration paused the Medicaid/CHIP Periodic Data Matching process for four years, allowing a large backlog to accumulate. Flagged individuals (or their estates) receive 30 days to dispute the match before subsidies stop; appeals remain available afterward. Officials emphasize that no one loses actual coverage—those affected already held other public insurance or were no longer living.
This is the same pattern we have documented for years. A Government Accountability Office sting found fictitious applicants and deceased people routinely approved for subsidies under an exchange system that operated on the honor system. CMS data showed millions of “phantom” Obamacare plans generating zero claims while taxpayers paid insurers every month—often for people already covered elsewhere or unaware they were enrolled. The identical problem appeared in Medicaid, where American Experiment analysis found up to one in five Minnesota enrollees did not know they had coverage, sometimes because they were on another program, out of state, or deceased. Payments to managed care organizations continued regardless. GAO also identified more than 7,000 deceased individuals still receiving Obamacare subsidies in a single year.
Stopping payments for dual enrollees and the deceased is among the lowest-hanging fruit in health care spending. In fact it’s not even low hanging. It’s on the ground and in a basket. It requires no benefit cuts. It simply ends subsidies for coverage that should never have been paid. Minnesota has lived this at both the state and federal level—duplicate Medicaid payments, phantom policies, and continued spending on people who are ineligible or no longer living. Restoring routine data matching and acting on the results is what competent program integrity looks like. Taxpayers should expect these checks to continue, and for states to apply the same basic verification to their own rolls.
American Experiment advocated for an automatic appeal process for the disenrolled and it was included in the plan rolled out yesterday. Thanks Vice President Vance for your hard work to stop wasting precious health care dollars.
Hopefully lawmakers will seek common sense measures to stop paying for the insurance of dead people, people who make too much money, live in another state or country, or are covered by other plans. “I’m not a robot” legislation promoted again this year will finally hold insurance companies partially responsible for wasted money they are paid for patients who will never see a doctor. Let’s hope the 2027 Minnesota legislature passes it.