CMS Administrator Dr. Oz Says Agency Identified $1.5 Billion in Annual Savings From Dual-Enrollment Removals
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced on Wednesday that a task force identified roughly 70,000 deceased individuals enrolled in Obamacare subsidized insurance and approximately 120,000 people enrolled in both Obamacare and a state Medicaid program. The Trump administration's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud estimates that removing these individuals could save taxpayers $1.5 billion annually.
Single source · Not corroborated
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced Wednesday that his team had identified two populations potentially receiving duplicative or ineligible federal health benefits: roughly 70,000 deceased individuals still enrolled in Obamacare subsidized health insurance, and approximately 120,000 people enrolled simultaneously in both an Obamacare subsidized plan and a state-run Medicaid program.
The Trump administration's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud attributed an estimated $1.5 billion in potential annual taxpayer savings to removing these individuals from the rolls. The announcement framed the dual-enrollment and deceased-enrollee findings as examples of fraud in the federal healthcare system.
The sole source for this story is the Washington Examiner, a right-leaning outlet, which reported the announcement without independent verification of the $1.5 billion figure, without expert assessment of the methodology used to identify the 120,000 dual enrollees, and without noting whether the identified individuals were notified or given opportunity to respond before disenrollment. The article did not specify the time period over which the $1.5 billion savings projection was calculated or detail how the task force cross-referenced enrollment data.