They Just Cut 760,000 People Off Obamacare. Here's the Excuse.
CMS cancelled coverage five weeks before open enrollment, on top of a subsidy cliff that already pushed 3 million out. Here's who pays.
The full report is below — also published on Beehiiv — with its receipt trail and source ladder. Every claim below clears at two-of-three independent sources before publication, with right-of-reply offered to every named subject.
They Just Cut 760,000 People Off Obamacare. Here's the Excuse.
CMS cancelled coverage five weeks before open enrollment, on top of a subsidy cliff that already pushed 3 million out. Here's who pays.
Michael Starr Hopkins
October 03, 2026
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★ Independent · Editor-Owned · No Paraphrase ★ Burn the Playbook "The newsletter DC reads and hopes you don't." | |||
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A month before open enrollment, Washington found a way to shrink the Obamacare rolls without taking a single vote.
On Sept. 22, CMS announced it had cancelled roughly 315,000 marketplace policies covering more than 760,000 people. The agency calls them unauthorized enrollments. It is investigating 440,000 more. And it froze new broker registrations for 2027 on the same day.
That lands on top of a year in which the enhanced premium tax credits expired and about 3 million people already walked away. Nov. 1 is coming. The people still standing are the ones being asked to pay more.
Nobody voted to shrink the marketplace. It is shrinking anyway.
By the Numbers
760,000+ people: lost marketplace coverage in cancellations CMS says were unauthorized enrollments, per AHA News, Sept. 22, 2026
440,000 more: enrollees under CMS investigation, and new broker registrations are frozen until Feb. 1, 2027 unless lifted or extended, per Morgan Lewis, Sept. 25, 2026
$2.2 billion: subsidy money CMS expects to recover from the cancellations, per Morgan Lewis, Sept. 2026
22.1M to 19.2M: marketplace enrollment from 2025 to February 2026, a 13% drop after the enhanced credits expired, per KFF, 2026
114%: average increase in what enrollees paid in premiums to keep the same plan, per KFF, 2026
$2,759 to $3,786: average marketplace deductible, 2025 to 2026, as buyers fled to bronze plans, per AJMC, May 2026
Here is what is proven: the enhanced credits expired, premiums jumped, enrollment fell. Here is what is reported: CMS's own account that the 760,000 were unauthorized. CMS has not published a case-by-case breakdown, so "fraud" is the agency's claim, not a finding anyone outside it has checked.
Broker fraud is real, and people were enrolled in plans they never asked for. Cleaning that up is fine. But when you pull coverage in bulk weeks before open enrollment, any real person caught in the net finds out the hard way.
The map tells you who pays.
KFF found both plan selections and paid-up enrollment fell in 37 states. Paid enrollment dropped about 32% in Ohio and Oklahoma, 30% in Arizona, 29% in South Carolina, 28% in Indiana and 27% in Michigan and Minnesota, per KFF.
States on HealthCare.gov with no state-funded help lost 15% of effectuated enrollment. State-run marketplaces lost 6%. All nine states that put their own money into subsidies kept more sign-ups paying than the national average, and New Mexico actually grew.
BTP argues this is the whole story in one line. Where governors and legislatures filled the gap, people kept their coverage. Where they didn't, families ate a doubled premium or dropped out.
Who benefits. Who pays.
The Treasury benefits: fewer subsidized enrollees means a smaller bill, and CMS puts the subsidy money it expects to recover at $2.2 billion. Insurers in shrinking markets lose volume but shed some risk.
The self-employed, the gig worker, the early retiree and the small-business family pay. The Congressional Budget Office projects healthier people drop first, pushing benchmark premiums 7.9% higher over time for everyone left in the pool, per the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker.
The deep cut
Twenty years inside campaigns taught me that the most powerful policy is the one nobody has to defend on a ballot. An expired credit is not a vote. An administrative cancellation is not a vote. Both show up in the mailbox anyway.
That is the campaign angle for 2026. Ohio, Arizona and Michigan are not abstractions on a health-policy chart; they are states where paid enrollment fell by more than a quarter. Any candidate who can say "I will bring your credit back" in plain English has an opening. Any candidate who can't explain what happened to that credit should expect the question.
As a father, I know what that envelope feels like. You do the math at the kitchen table, then you decide which risk your family can live with. Millions made that call this year. Nov. 1, they make it again.
Open enrollment starts Nov. 1. Forward this to one person who buys their own coverage so they check their plan before it is gone.
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Sources
AHA News: CMS to remove Marketplace coverage for more than 760,000, Sept. 22, 2026.
Fierce Healthcare: CMS to cancel ACA coverage for 760K, crack down on brokers, Sept. 2026.
Morgan Lewis: CMS Cancels Marketplace Enrollments and Imposes Moratorium on New ACA Broker Registrations, Sept. 2026.
KFF: How Has ACA Marketplace Enrollment Changed Across States in 2026?, 2026.
KFF: What We Know So Far About 2026 ACA Marketplace Enrollment, Premiums, and Deductibles, 2026.
AJMC: ACA Marketplace Deductibles Surge as Enhanced Tax Credits Expire, May 2026.
Burn Notice: They didn't repeal Obamacare. They just made it cost more to keep and easier to lose.
Michael
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