Trump's Trials - Trump administration drops 760,000 Americans from ACA coverage, citing fraud

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Citing widespread fraud, JD Vance and Dr. Mehmet Oz announced 760,000 Americans had been kicked off health insurance purchased in the federal ACA marketplace. The move raises lots of questions. NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin reports.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's Trump's terms from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Every episode, we bring you a story from NPR's recent coverage of the 47th president, with a focus on ways he's using power like no president before him. Here is the latest from NPR. From NPR News, I'm Steve Inskeep in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration says it canceled health insurance for what it calls phantom enrollees. officials are not sharing details of how they decided the 760,000 names did not represent real people.

NPR Selena Simmons-Duffin reports. The enrollments in question were on health care.gov, the marketplace set up by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. This is for people who don't get insurance from their job or a public program like Medicare or Medicaid. They can go on health care.gov and buy a private health insurance plan, oftentimes with premium subsidies paid for by the federal government. On Tuesday, Vice President Vance said fraudster brokers were signing up, quote, phantom people into these plans. He announced moves to punish brokers, like stopping new ones from registering for the upcoming open enrollment and changing enrollment processes. He said the government would save more than $2 billion in subsidies it would have been sending to insurance companies for the enrollments it canceled. There could have been collateral damage here.

Cynthia Cox is the director of the program on the Affordable Care Act at KFF, a nonpartisan health research. organization. She heard some time ago from contacts in the health insurance industry that this effort was underway. What we know is that the administration sent a list of about a million people to health insurance companies and asked these health insurance companies to try to make contact with those people. And if those people did not respond within 30 days, they ultimately had their plan canceled. She says there is fraud in the marketplace, but it's also entirely possible that qualified people had their health insurance canceled. Cox says, for instance, if someone didn't file a claim, they might have just been healthy. And if they didn't respond to the

notice in time, they might have just missed it. People move, you know, they don't check their email or their voicemail or, you know, that sort of thing. Vance and other Trump administration officials said they were looking at 400,000 more enrollees who might get their plans canceled. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs health care.gov and the government's other health care programs, did not respond to NPR's questions by airtime about the process it's using and what happens if there were mistakes and people had their plans canceled in error. Selina Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Washington. And before we wrap up, a thank you to our NPR Plus supporters who hear each show without

sponsored messages and, of course, who help protect independent journalism. If you are not a supporter yet, you can visit plus.npr.org to find you. find out how you can get a ton of podcast perks across dozens of NPR shows, like bonus episodes, exclusive merchandise, and more. Again, that's plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's Terms from NPR.