The Trump administration has announced steps to remove as many as 2.8 million duplicative enrollees in two or more federal health care plans, saying the move will save $14 billion annually.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that an average of 1.2 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid/Children’s Health Insurance Program in two or more states for each month in 2024.
CMS also found an average of 1.6 million people were enrolled in both Medicaid/CHIP and a subsidized Affordable Care Act exchange plan each month.
CMS said it now wants to ensure that individuals are only enrolled in one program to stop the federal government from paying multiple times for the same people to receive health coverage.
As a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, CMS said it can prevent the federal government from paying twice for the same person’s care.
“HHS staff uncovered millions of Americans who were illegally or improperly enrolled in Medicaid and ACA plans,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Under the Trump administration, we will no longer tolerate waste, fraud, and abuse at the expense of our most vulnerable citizens. With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, we now have the tools to strengthen these vital programs for generations to come.”
GOP lawmakers lauded the moves made by the administration to help prevent fraudulent and wasteful actions within the government healthcare system.
“I applaud President Trump for taking decisive action to remove 2.8 million duplicative enrollees from State Medicaid programs and ACA exchanges, a move that will uphold the integrity of these programs by rooting out corrosive waste, fraud, and abuse,” said Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky.“This builds upon work by House Republicans in the [One Big Beautiful Bill] that gives tools to CMS and the States to prevent wasteful spending like this from happening again.”
Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said he was glad to see CMS “crack down on the billions in waste, fraud and abuse that I’ve long been calling out. It’s unacceptable that taxpayers have continued to foot the bill for this expensive fraud.”
He said, “CMS’s actions build on Republicans’ successful work in the One Big Beautiful Bill to enact critical measures to strengthen health care, all while curbing fraud.”
Democrats, however, say the new law increases health care costs for millions of Medicare enrollees and will “collapse” the Medicaid system.
“Republicans have supported a policy which involves the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. And by setting this massive cut into motion, it lays the conditions for the collapse of the Medicaid system in many ways,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on CNN.
“It’s important to recognize that this bill also will rip coverage away from millions of Americans because of changes that were made to the Affordable Care Act. It also goes after Medicare, possibly a cut that could be set into motion by more than $500 billion and it also represents an attack on the Children’s Health Insurance Program and on Planned Parenthood,” he said.
