WASHINGTON — More than 1 million people enrolled in Obamacare plans lack Social Security Numbers, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Kennedy called that “a glaring warning sign for fraud” across the Obamacare program and faulted President Trump’s predecessors for not maintaining proper guardrails in social safety net programs.
“The Obamacare marketplace is plagued by fraud in large part because the Biden administration dismantled basic program integrity guardrails, while partisan lawfare blocked common sense efforts to protect taxpayers,” Kennedy grumbled in a video announcement with Oz on Saturday.
“Why are we paying people we don’t know if they actually exist?”
An estimated 19.2 million Americans are enrolled in an Obamacare exchange plan, according to the latest data from HHS.
That’s down from about 23.4 million in 2025.
Notably, the enhanced Obamacare subsidies put in place under the Biden administration expired at the end of last year.
Kennedy and Oz have been crusading against fraud in social spending on healthcare. They didn’t say how many of the 1 million Obamacare enrollees who lacked Social Security numbers were suspected of fraud.
But they argued that the systems in place should’ve identified the lack of proper vetting earlier.
Oz claimed that “rogue agents and other bad actors” have been enrolling “unsuspecting Americans in health plans they never signed up for,” and using fake identities to collect fees from insurance companies for “selling plans they never legitimately sold.”
Typically, they select plans that don’t have premiums so that people are unaware that they’ve been enrolled, according to the health bosses.
“Some of these agents refuse to follow basic rules, like providing their clients’ social security numbers. That, my friends, is a huge red flag,” Oz claimed.
It’s not clear how widespread that alleged phenomenon is.
The two Trump admin leader said they have a “zero tolerance policy” for such fraud and have eliminated thousands of fraudulent enrollments.
“We’re also working with insurers to cancel every policy that should never have been issued and recover every taxpayer dollar that was fraudulently paid out,” Kennedy said.
“If you’re a fraudster, here’s our advice to you: do not walk away from us, run, because we are going to find you,” Oz added.