More than a million people without Social Security numbers are enrolled in Obamacare, and the tab belongs to the American taxpayer.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz disclosed the figure in a video released Saturday, calling it a glaring warning sign that the federal health insurance exchange has been wide open to abuse. The border crisis doesn't end at the Rio Grande — it reaches straight into the tax code, where benefits flow to people who shouldn't qualify and brokers pocket commissions on enrollments that never should have happened.

Kennedy laid the blame at the feet of his predecessors. "The Obamacare marketplace is plagued by fraud in large part because the Biden administration dismantled basic program integrity guardrails," he said. "A partisan lawfare blocked the common sense efforts to protect taxpayers."

A June HHS issue brief narrows the picture: CMS flagged roughly 1 million broker-assisted sign-ups through HealthCare.gov that carried no Social Security number and owed no premium. Investigators labeled those enrollments suspicious, not confirmed fraud. But the scale is staggering. The agency reports it has already stripped or blocked close to 2.9 million improper enrollments and believes another 2.6 million remain. A Trump administration official pegged the fraud at roughly $10 billion across 2021 through 2024, according to Fox News Digital, though that figure carries no independent verification.

Oz pointed to brokers gaming the system for commissions, enrolling people in zero-premium plans so the targets never even notice. "Some of these agents refuse to follow basic rules like providing their clients social security number. That, my friends, is a huge red flag," he said. He also warned that "rogue agents and other bad actors" have been signing up "unsuspecting Americans in health plans they never signed up for" and collecting fees from insurers for plans they never legitimately sold.

Outside analysts back up the concern. The Paragon Health Institute estimated about 6.2 million improper 2026 sign-ups — nearly 27% of exchange enrollment — though it cautions that not every improper case is fraud.

The health policy group KFF reads the surge differently, attributing record enrollment growth to enhanced subsidies and warning that 3.8 million people could lose coverage if Congress lets those credits lapse. The New York Post noted that the enhanced Obamacare subsidies put in place under Biden expired at the end of last year, and enrollment has already dropped from 23.4 million in 2025 to 19.2 million. KFF's frame — that the real story is people losing coverage — is the same establishment reflex that treats every dollar of public spending as sacrosanct and every accountability measure as cruelty.

Neither outlet pressed hard on why it took this long to flag a million enrollees with no Social Security number. The Post noted that Kennedy and Oz "didn't say how many of the 1 million Obamacare enrollees who lacked Social Security numbers were suspected of fraud," and that "it's not clear how widespread that alleged phenomenon is." Fair enough — but the absence of a confirmed fraud count is itself an indictment. If the system can't tell you who's real and who isn't, the system isn't designed to protect the taxpayer.

Kennedy promised action: "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." Oz had a blunter message for the brokers: "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."

The open question is whether the guardrails stay up after the cameras leave. Both parties had a hand in building a marketplace that paid out first and asked questions never. The bill always comes due — and it's never sent to the people who wrote the law.