The federal government has canceled about 315,000 Affordable Care Act Marketplace enrollments after a sweeping investigation uncovered signs of possible fraud and unauthorized sign-ups. The canceled policies were supposedly covering more than 760,000 people — but officials say some of those people may not even exist.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) worked with health insurance companies to investigate the suspicious enrollments. Some involved real people who may have been signed up without their permission, while others contained missing or questionable information. The government says canceling the enrollments could recover about $2.2 billion in federal health insurance subsidies.
But the number does not necessarily mean 760,000 actual people just lost legitimate health insurance. Administration officials say the questionable enrollments include people who were signed up without their knowledge, applications with missing or unverifiable information and, in some cases, purported enrollees who may not exist at all.
The crackdown is also targeting insurance agents and brokers. CMS said it issued notices involving 569 agents and brokers who submitted unusually high numbers of 2026 applications without key identifying information, such as Social Security numbers. The agency has also temporarily stopped new registrations for certain agents and brokers for the 2027 plan year while adding stronger identity and consumer-authorization requirements.
CMS says it will continue reviewing suspicious Marketplace enrollments with insurance companies and cancel those confirmed to be unauthorized. That means the 315,000 enrollments removed so far may not be the end of the cleanup.
The Readovia Lens
The striking number in this story is 760,000, but the more important number may be 315,000 — the enrollments the government says it has actually confirmed were unauthorized. The difference shows how difficult it can be to determine how many real consumers are behind questionable insurance accounts, particularly when some applications may have been created without a person’s knowledge or with incomplete or false information.
