The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on September 22, 2026 that it had cancelled roughly 315,000 marketplace enrollments covering more than 760,000 people. The tense matters and most coverage got it wrong: this already happened. The agency's own fact sheet says, “On August 31, 2026, CMS canceled approximately 315,000 enrollments covering over 760,000 individuals after confirmation that these enrollments were unauthorized.” The announcement came three weeks after the coverage ended. A further 419,000 enrollments are under review and have not been cancelled.
CMS says the enrollments were made without the enrollees' authorization, generally by agents or brokers collecting commissions, and that recovering the subsidies paid on them is worth about $2.2 billion. That figure is the agency's own expectation of what it will claw back, not an audited saving: “CMS expects this will result in a return of approximately $2.2 billion in advance payments of the premium tax credit (APTC) for these canceled enrollments.”
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “We are shutting down unauthorized Marketplace enrollments and returning approximately $2.2 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies. CMS is strengthening safeguards, pursuing bad actors, and holding agents and brokers accountable when they break the rules.” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said the agency is “making sure Americans, not bad actors, remain in control of their health coverage,” and called the number “the tip of the iceberg.” Vice President JD Vance described the cancelled group as “a mix of both phantom people, but also real people who just don't meet the eligibility requirements.”
Fraudulent broker enrollment is a real and documented problem, and the administration's core claim is that many of these people do not exist. Oz described the agency's efforts to reach them: “We call them phantoms, because we believe most of them don't exist or they had no idea they had coverage. We believe that because we've been writing them, telexing them, FedExing, whatever we possibly can do to get in touch with them. They won't answer.” That is an assertion about people who did not respond, which is not the same as proof that they are not real.
What has not been established is what happens to anyone in that group who is real. NBC News reports that “the administration did not provide details about who lost coverage or how those individuals were informed.” Neither the press release nor the fact sheet mentions notice, an appeals process, or a special enrollment period for someone wrongly cancelled. An interim final rule was announced alongside the action but had not appeared in the Federal Register or on public inspection as of September 24. Anyone whose coverage ended on August 31 and who did not know it would have spent three weeks uninsured before the government said so publicly.