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Medicare Advantage Bribery Scheme Highlights 'Bad Behavior' Trump Wants to Reward
"The Trump administration recently announced it would substantially increase payments to private Medicare Advantage plans in 2026, rewarding their bad behavior."
May 02, 2025
Healthcare advocates have long condemned the for-profit insurance companies that manage Medicare Advantage plans for overbilling the federal government by hundreds of billions of dollars per year, using artificial intelligence and algorithms to deny patients' claims, and tricking patients with disabilities via deceptive marketing practices—and a lawsuit originally initiated by a whistleblower is accusing three such private insurance giants of taking part in overt bribery.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint Thursday under the False Claims Act, accusing three of the largest Medicare Advantage insurers—Aetna, Humana, and Elevance Health—of paying brokers hundreds of millions of dollars to steer beneficiaries toward their plans, and to steer disabled seniors away in an effort to keep them more profitable.
The American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) noted that the lawsuit comes from an unlikely place—the Trump administration, which last month announced it would substantially increase payments to the privately run plans, increasing rates to the tune of $25 billion in additional funds next year despite their history of defrauding the government and patients.
While applauding the DOJ for cracking down on the bribery scheme, the group noted that "despite its promises to crack down on such wasteful spending, the Trump administration recently announced it would substantially increase payments to private Medicare Advantage plans in 2026, rewarding their bad behavior."
Dr. Mehmet Oz, who President Donald Trump appointed to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has also advocated for a proposal called Medicare Advantage for All—further expanding the for-profit plans that now cover more than half of Americans who are eligible for Medicare.
"For years, these firms have driven seniors into worse care with deceptive marketing and discrimination, but now it's clear they're crooks too."
The lawsuit filed Thursday also named three brokers—eHealth, Inc., GoHealth, Inc., and SelectQuote Inc.—and said that between 2016-21, the companies "paid hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to the defendant brokers in exchange for enrollments into the insurers' Medicare Advantage plans."
The brokers are accused of directing beneficiaries to the plans that paid them the most in kickbacks, regardless of the suitability of the plans. They also allegedly provided their employees with incentives to sell plans based on the payments from the three insurers and refused to sell Medicare Advantage plans for the three companies if they didn't pay the brokers sufficiently.
Aetna and Humana are also accused of conspiring with the brokers to "discriminate against Medicare beneficiaries with disabilities whom they perceived to be less profitable," threatening to withhold payments unless brokers enrolled fewer disabled senior citizens.
"Private Medicare Advantage plans routinely fail to deliver quality care—especially for seniors and the most vulnerable—and are among the most wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive actors in our healthcare system," said Emma Freer, senior policy analyst for healthcare at AELP. "For years, these firms have driven seniors into worse care with deceptive marketing and discrimination, but now it's clear they're crooks too—bribing brokers behind closed doors because they know no one would choose these plans on a level playing field."
In addition to cracking down on the bribery scheme, Freer called on Trump's DOJ to "move swiftly on its ongoing monopolization and fraud investigations in the largest Medicare Advantage plan provider, UnitedHealth Group."
The DOJ opened an investigation in February into UnitedHealth's effect on competition in insurance, pharmacy benefit management, physician networks, and other sectors of the for-profit healthcare industry.
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Declaring People Dead Is Yet Another Trump Admin Failure to Protect Social Security
This claim of unbounded power is made all the more concerning by the lack of effective oversight at the Social Security Administration.
Apr 16, 2025
The Trump administration has made a shocking claim: that it can declare living people dead to cut off their access to government benefits and the broader U.S. financial system.
According to reporting from The New York Times, the Social Security Administration (SSA), at the direction of DOGE, has begun knowingly adding living people to SSA’s death records—the Death Master File (DMF)—by assigning them false “dates of death” to “terminat[e]” their “financial lives.”
Being wrongfully identified as dead in Social Security records “can lead to benefit termination… and severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals.” Because the DMF is leveraged by many federal and state agencies to determine eligibility—and by the Treasury Department’s government-wide “Do Not Pay” system to prevent improper payments—false inclusion of a death date can lead to an individual losing their health coverage through Medicare, having their tax return delayed, or having their Social Security or other eligible benefit payments cancelled, among other harms.
There is no legal authority that allows the Trump administration to falsely claim an individual is dead—and that opens the possibility that the administration could falsely add living people to the DMF for any reason.
The DMF is also used by some private-sector companies with a legitimate business or anti-fraud need for the data—including financial institutions, credit agencies, insurance companies, and pension administrators. As a result, being inappropriately listed as dead can result in severe financial consequences like disruption in bank account access, credit cards being cancelled, pension benefits being paused, insurance coverage being cancelled or claims being denied, rejected employment applications, or denial of credit.
The first group of people to be wrongfully and knowingly declared dead by the Trump administration are reportedly being targeted in an immigration enforcement effort focused, at least in part, on people who were lawfully present and eligible to work until the Trump administration abruptly terminated their lawful status. These individuals would have been correctly issued Social Security numbers (SSNs) upon obtaining their lawful immigration statuses, and any change in those statuses should not limit their access to their own financial resources in U.S. banks.
The Trump administration made an unsupported claim that everyone in the initial group had either links to terrorist activity or criminal records. But an internal review by SSA staff that focused on some of the youngest targets—including children as young as 13 years old—“found no evidence of crimes or law enforcement interactions.” The administration’s unproven claim follows its other wildly inaccurate and widely debunked claims about Social Security—including false claims that people who are 150 years old receive Social Security payments and that 40% of calls to Social Security come from fraudsters, when evidence suggests the percentage is “minuscule.”
It is deeply concerning that the administration is knowingly falsifying records. While SSA has the legal authority to collect information about people’s deaths to administer Social Security, there is no legal authority that allows the Trump administration to falsely claim an individual is dead—and that opens the possibility that the administration could falsely add living people to the DMF for any reason.
Moreover, it’s unclear how an individual could have themselves removed from the list if being dead is no longer the sole criterion for being included on the DMF. Recognizing that wrongful inclusion in the DMF can be “devastating” to individuals and their families, SSA has taken steps under previous administrations both to reduce the chances of such mistakes and to resolve them as quickly as possible. Previously, when a person was included in error in the DMF, they had only to make the straightforward case that they were alive, something that could be achieved with identification documents and an in-person visit to a Social Security field office. In this case, without transparent guidance on what circumstances other than death would result in inclusion on the DMF, and without a clear process for appeal, there is no longer a clear pathway to proving that the inclusion was in error.
This claim of unbounded power is made all the more concerning by the lack of effective oversight at SSA. The Trump administration has already dismissed the acting Social Security inspector general without cause and pushed out many nonpartisan career officials, reducing oversight and guardrails. And there are reports that staff objections to the legality of falsifying death information in SSA data have already directly led to the removal of at least one agency senior executive.
As SSA and DOGE (the “Department of Government Efficiency”) prioritize carrying out this reckless and seemingly illegal action, it serves as just one more example of the Trump administration’s failure to protect Social Security, including undermining core systems that are critical to running the program. At a time when the administration should be doing everything it can to reassure seniors, people with disabilities, and others who receive Social Security benefits, it is instead making deep cuts to SSA staffing, leading to overworked and understaffed field offices and degrading customer service and the reliability of SSA systems; proposing and then partially walking back the unnecessary elimination of phone services, leading to confusion and unnecessary burdens on seniors; and now falsely labeling people as dead in SSA databases.
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'Outrageous Abuse of Power': Trump Weaponizes Social Security for Deportation Spree
"Though Trump claimed he wouldn't cut benefits, he essentially is by diverting dedicated monies from their intended purpose of paying Social Security benefits to the immoral purpose of maliciously ruining lives."
Apr 11, 2025
The Trump administration this week reportedly classified thousands of immigrants living in the United States as dead in a Social Security database in an effort to force them out of the country, a scheme that was met with furious uproar from advocates and lawmakers.
By entering the names and Social Security numbers of roughly 6,000 immigrants into Social Security's "death master file," the administration has revoked their ability to legally work in the U.S. and receive benefits in a bid to get them to "self-deport," several news outlets reported Thursday.
"This is an outrageous abuse of power," Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, said in a statement. "It will not only create extreme hardship, but kill people. Imagine, in one Trump administration keystroke, losing your income, your health insurance, access to your bank account, your credit cards, your home, and more."
"If they get away with this, it would be no surprise if they then move on to marking their perceived enemies as dead—citizens and non-citizens alike," Altman added. "This is a total misuse of the dedicated revenue that workers contribute to Social Security, with every paycheck. Though Trump claimed he wouldn't cut benefits, he essentially is by diverting dedicated monies from their intended purpose of paying Social Security benefits to the immoral purpose of maliciously ruining lives."
"The Trump administration's weaponization of Social Security is shocking and unconscionable, and we expect House Republicans will remain silent."
The Washington Postreported that the classification of thousands of immigrants as "dead" came at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who—in tandem with other administration officials—is trampling basic rights as she moves to carry out Trump's mass deportation agenda.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called the Trump administration's scheme "utterly unprecedented" and warned that it "has the potential to cause immense problems for people."
"And it's also one with a HUGE potential for error," he wrote on social media. "If the data isn't perfect, people here legally might be effectively declared dead."
According to the Post, "among the people being targeted are immigrants who have bona fide Social Security numbers but have lost their legal status in the U.S., such as those who entered under one of the Biden administration's temporary work programs that have since ended."
"The immigrants' names were placed in the database following two memorandums of agreement signed Monday by Noem and Leland Dudek, the acting Social Security commissioner," the Post reported. "The memos authorize Social Security to place the immigrants in the death file for national security reasons and under the Social Security Act."
The New York Timesreported that the "initial names" added to Social Security's death file "are convicted criminals and 'suspected terrorists,'" according to internal administration documents, "but officials said the effort could broaden to include others in the country without authorization."
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that undocumented immigrants paid roughly $26 billion in Social Security taxes in 2022.
Dudek, who has presided over a large-scale assault on the Social Security Administration (SSA) since Trump installed him to lead the agency in February, wrote in an email to staff that the "financial lives" of the immigrants added to the death file would be "terminated," according to the Times. SSA is also reportedly sharing sensitive personal information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Dudek recently faced calls to resign after internal emails revealed that SSA terminated contracts with the state of Maine in what one Democratic lawmaker called "direct retaliation for statements made by Maine Governor Janet Mills that upset President Donald Trump."
The acting SSA leader's plans for the agency, including mass staffing cuts and field office closures that advocates say amount to benefit cuts, have drawn widespread outrage. The Timesreported earlier this week that "thousands of worried and frustrated recipients have thronged local field offices, asking why the phone lines are jammed, whether their local offices will be closed by Elon Musk's team of software engineers and technology executives, and whether they will lose their benefits."
"Waves of buyouts and early retirements have hobbled the staff at many local offices," the newspaper added, "and recipients say it has become harder to use the agency's website and phone systems, or even be seen in person."
Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Richard Neal (D-Mass.) issued a joint statement Thursday condemning the Trump administration's latest weaponization of SSA as "digital murder" that "will make life exponentially harder for these victims, who could be effectively forced out of this country if their Social Security numbers are terminated."
"If they cancel the Social Security number of one person, where do they stop?" the lawmakers asked. "The Trump administration's weaponization of Social Security is shocking and unconscionable, and we expect House Republicans will remain silent. If you care about Social Security, you need to raise your voice because, despite what he says, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the biggest threat to people and their earned benefits."
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