Government watchdogs warned for a decade that Obamacare's exchanges were a playground for fraud.
This year Washington finally went looking for the one detail fraudsters couldn't fake.
What investigators found attached to over a million Obamacare accounts is stunning.
CMS Says a Million Obamacare Enrollees Have No Social Security Number on File
Dr. Mehmet Oz just told Fox News Digital something that should make every taxpayer furious.
More than 1.1 million people enrolled in Obamacare plans do not have a Social Security number on file with the federal government.
Oz runs the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
He says that gap isn't a clerical error.
It's the fingerprint of a scam.
"These are phantom accounts," Oz said.
"There are no human beings involved in these accounts."
Vice President JD Vance stood next to Oz and announced the administration's fraud task force had already ripped 750,000 of those fake accounts out of the system.
That single move saves taxpayers $2.2 billion that was headed to people who, according to CMS, don't exist.
Oz said his team tried contacting these "enrollees" directly.
No claims filed.
No answers to basic questions.
No Social Security number to even confirm the person qualifies for the subsidy in the first place.
Invent a name, collect a federal check every month, and vanish – that's the entire scheme in one sentence.
GAO Warned About Obamacare Fraud Since 2016 and Washington Ignored It
This scam has a paper trail going back ten years.
The Government Accountability Office caught Obamacare's exchanges failing basic fraud checks a decade ago, under the Obama administration, and flagged the same failures again under Biden.
GAO's own undercover agents tried to game the enrollment system themselves and got approved anyway.
Senate Republicans like Chuck Grassley have spent years demanding answers while Democrats in Washington did nothing.
Grassley has pointed to a $161 million Affordable Care Act fraud indictment that left two executives facing more than 50 years in prison.
The Paragon Health Institute mapped out exactly why the scam kept working.
Brokers collect a monthly commission for every name on the books, real or not.
Insurers get paid by the government either way, so they had zero incentive to ask questions.
Zero-premium plans meant a fake enrollee cost nothing out of pocket – which meant nobody on the other end of the phone was ever checking.
Biden's administration grew Obamacare enrollment from roughly 10 million people to 22 million and touted it as a win.
Paragon's researchers trace that surge to something else entirely.
They call it an enroll-at-any-cost approach that let fraud explode.
Oz isn't interested in pretending this is complicated.
He's now telling every health insurer in America to work only with brokers willing to record their enrollment calls.
"Why wouldn't you?" Oz asked.
"What are you nervous about? What are you worried about? Why don't you want me to hear what you discussed?"
That's not Washington's usual bureaucrat mumbling.
That's a man daring an entire industry to come clean on camera.
Democrats in Washington are already complaining that the crackdown is moving too fast.
Those are the same Democrats who said almost nothing while GAO report after GAO report described the same brokers gaming the same system.
Now that Republicans are actually pulling the plug on phantom accounts, Democrats want everyone to slow down.
What This $2.2 Billion Obamacare Fraud Crackdown Means for Your Tax Dollars
Picture a stranger walking into a bank, opening an account under a name that doesn't exist, and getting a government check mailed to it every single month for years.
That's what just happened with your health care dollars.
It took a Trump administration task force to shut it down.
Those missing numbers are still attached to more than a million accounts, and Oz says his team isn't finished pulling threads.
Expect more suspended brokers, more DOJ indictments, and more insurers forced to explain why they never asked basic questions before cashing federal checks.
The Treasury Department has already started mailing $500 refund checks to roughly a million Americans, along with a letter from President Trump blaming the Biden administration by name for the overcharge.
That's a receipt Washington almost never sends.
Sources:
- Hannah Brennan, "'Phantom' Obamacare Accounts Spark New Crackdown as Oz Targets Broker Fraud," Fox News, October 4, 2026.
- Brian Blase and Drew Gonshorowski, "The Great Obamacare Enrollment Fraud," Paragon Health Institute, June 2024.
- Gabrielle Kalisz, "DOJ Confirms Florida's Rampant Exchange Fraud," Paragon Health Institute, 2025.
- Chuck Grassley, "Grassley Pushes CMS to Crack Down on Obamacare Fraud," U.S. Senate Press Release, 2025.
- Government Accountability Office, "Nonpartisan Gov't Watchdog Warns Obamacare Marketplaces Still 'Vulnerable to Fraud,'" September 12, 2016.
