The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it has eliminated federally subsidized Obamacare coverage for approximately 189,000 individuals identified as either deceased or already enrolled in other government healthcare programs, a move officials estimate will save American taxpayers roughly $1.5 billion over the coming year.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said the latest action is part of a sweeping effort to eliminate improper payments under the Affordable Care Act and ensure that federal subsidies are directed only toward individuals who qualify for assistance.

Federal officials said the affected enrollments included individuals who were simultaneously receiving coverage through Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, as well as people whose records indicated they had died.

The announcement represents another phase of President Donald Trump’s campaign to reduce waste, fraud and abuse in federally funded healthcare programs, with administration officials blaming years of suspended eligibility reviews under President Joe Biden for allowing hundreds of thousands of questionable enrollments to accumulate.

CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz sharply criticized the previous administration’s handling of enrollment verification, arguing that the failure to conduct routine checks allowed improper payments to continue at taxpayers’ expense.

“When it comes to program integrity, the Biden Administration was sleeping on the job,” Oz said in a statement released by CMS.

“They paused looking for duplicate Medicaid and Obamacare coverage for four years, creating a backlog of hundreds of thousands of duplicate enrollments.”

According to CMS, the Biden administration suspended periodic reviews designed to identify overlapping Medicaid and Affordable Care Act enrollment between 2021 and 2024, leaving federal officials with a substantial backlog of cases requiring verification.

The Trump administration reinstated those reviews in 2025, when CMS identified approximately 551,000 individuals who were receiving Obamacare subsidies despite already having Medicaid coverage.

Federal officials estimate that terminating those overlapping subsidies produced nearly $4.4 billion in savings during the previous year.

Combined with the projected $1.5 billion in savings from Wednesday’s announcement, the administration says its efforts have already identified almost $6 billion in taxpayer savings across the two rounds of enforcement.

“We’ve already saved nearly $6 billion, and we will continue to work hard to restore taxpayers’ confidence that the programs they fund are spending their hard-earned dollars wisely and efficiently,” Oz said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended the crackdown as a necessary step toward preserving federal healthcare assistance for eligible Americans while preventing the government from paying multiple times for overlapping coverage.

“Americans overwhelmingly support protecting access to healthcare for vulnerable Americans, but taxpayers shouldn’t pay twice for the same coverage,” Kennedy said.

The administration says its procedures include safeguards intended to protect eligible Americans from losing assistance because of errors in government records.

Individuals identified as receiving overlapping coverage are notified of the discrepancy and given 30 days to challenge the determination before their Affordable Care Act subsidies are discontinued.

Those who miss the initial deadline may still appeal the decision or demonstrate that their Medicaid or CHIP coverage is ending, potentially allowing them to regain eligibility for subsidized Marketplace insurance.

Similar protections apply when government databases incorrectly list a living individual as deceased. Federal officials contact the person or the individual’s estate and provide an opportunity to correct the record before terminating the subsidy and associated coverage.

Additional details released Wednesday indicate that the latest enforcement effort includes approximately 120,000 people with overlapping Medicaid coverage, 58,000 with Medicare coverage and 11,000 listed as deceased. Federal officials expect to identify approximately 3,500 additional cases before the end of October.

Health officials estimate that the latest actions will prevent approximately $738 million in improper payments during 2026, with annual savings potentially exceeding $1.5 billion thereafter.

The administration emphasized that the savings estimates concern payments to insurance companies for subsidized Marketplace policies. The identification of duplicate coverage does not necessarily mean that the affected individuals personally committed fraud.

Federal authorities have also been investigating improper Obamacare enrollments involving inaccurate income information and allegations that insurance brokers enrolled consumers in health plans without their knowledge or authorization.

The latest announcement follows a separate initiative launched by the White House Fraud Task Force in September, when officials moved to terminate more than 750,000 Affordable Care Act enrollments they identified as potentially fraudulent.

That earlier effort was projected to save approximately $2.2 billion and was presented as another major component of the administration’s campaign to strengthen eligibility verification.

Vice President JD Vance, who helped announce the September initiative, said the government was taking steps to ensure that federal healthcare subsidies were being distributed only to people who qualified for them.

“We’re actually making sure that people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them,” Vance said.

“Amazingly, we weren’t doing that before.”

CMS is also preparing additional enrollment-verification measures, including a requirement beginning in January 2027 for states to check Medicaid beneficiaries’ addresses as part of efforts to identify inaccurate or outdated enrollment information.