Funding for Obamacare Outreach Program Cut by 90 Percent

A man leaves the UniVista Insurance office after shopping for a health plan under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in Miami in December 2015. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Trump administration on Feb. 14 cut funding for an outreach program under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that helps people sign up for health insurance coverage, according to a statement from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS).

The agency said in a statement that ACA navigators will receive $10 million per year over the next four years. In 2024, the navigator program received $98 million, according to the agency. The ACA, passed in 2010, is a sweeping health care plan known as Obamacare.

CMS stated it was a cost-cutting move that would allow for health care exchanges to focus on more efficient strategies.

“Overall, navigator performance data shows that the current level of funding does not represent a reasonable return on investment,“ CMS officials said. ”These numbers indicate that navigators are not enrolling nearly enough people to justify the substantial amount of federal dollars previously spent on the program.”

In 2024, the navigators enrolled 92,000 consumers, which is “just 0.6 percent of plan selections through the [federally facilitated exchanges] during the open enrollment period ... at a cost of $1,061 per enrollment.”

“Additionally, the average cost per enrollment exceeded $3,000 for 12 of the 56 navigator grantee organizations. Looking back at the grant period covering the 2019 plan year—the year before the COVID-19 pandemic under a similar regulatory approach—navigators likewise enrolled 0.6 percent of total enrollments through the FFEs at a substantially lower cost of $10 million,” the statement said.

In response to the CMS announcement, Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) criticized in a statement that the funding cut was “a direct attack on the health, well-being, and pocketbooks of communities across” her district.

A nonprofit called Protect Our Care noted in a statement Friday that the first Trump administration also cut funding for the Obamacare navigator program, which it said led to more than 1 million people not being signed up for coverage.

However, Friday’s CMS statement said that $360 million will be saved over four years by cutting the program and noted that the user fee that is paid to the navigators is “directly passed through to the premium that health insurers charge.”

“The savings from the navigator program supports lower premiums for consumers in the individual health insurance market,” it stated. “People who do not qualify for federal premium subsidies will directly benefit from lower premiums. Lower premiums will also translate to less federal spending on premium subsidies.”

The announcement is one of the first major health-related directives issued under the Trump administration, and comes a day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy was asked about Obamacare and Medicaid and said Americans “don’t like” either federal program. Instead, he said, Americans “would prefer to be on private insurance” but cannot afford it.

“We need to listen to what people prefer to be on,” he said.