The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that also runs the health insurance marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act, has stopped registering new agents and brokers for the 2027 plan year unless they already hold an active 2026 Exchange Agreement. The freeze is temporary and applies to newcomers to the federal exchange system rather than to every agent who sells marketplace coverage. CMS tied the decision to a pattern in its own enrollment data and to an enforcement record that already includes more than 200 termination notices sent to agents and brokers since January.
Why the newest agents, and not the whole workforce, got frozen out
CMS explained its reasoning in a Sept. 22 fact sheet on Federal Marketplace anti-fraud actions: agents and brokers who newly registered for the 2026 plan year turned out to be 2.8 times more likely to submit an application with an unresolved income-verification issue, and 2.7 times more likely to leave an applicant’s Social Security number off the paperwork entirely, compared with agents who had been registered for longer. That gap is why the 2027 registration moratorium targets first-time registrants rather than the entire agent and broker workforce selling coverage through the federally facilitated exchange and the state-based exchanges that use the federal enrollment platform. An agent or broker who already holds a signed 2026 Exchange Agreement is not affected by the freeze and can register normally for 2027; the door CMS closed is the one new entrants would otherwise walk through with none of that enrollment history on file.
What a termination notice does not check: CMS’s new registration freeze and its termination notices target agents and brokers directly, not the enrollment paperwork a consumer already signed with one of them. The fraud evidence and report log in The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit gives a place to record who handled that paperwork and when, in case it needs to be reported.
More than 200 terminations, with hundreds of notices still working through the pipeline
CMS said more than 200 non-compliant agents and brokers have received termination notices since January, cutting off their ability to submit or manage marketplace applications through the federal exchange. Separately, the agency issued 569 notices of intent to terminate this summer to agents and brokers whose 2026 applications were missing key identifying information, most often a Social Security number. A notice of intent opens a response window before CMS decides whether to finalize a termination, rather than acting as an immediate cutoff. Of the first 100 notices in that batch, 66 had already resulted in termination as of the fact sheet’s Sept. 22 release, and the remaining 469 were still working through that response period.
The rest of the agent oversight overhaul
Beyond the moratorium and the terminations, CMS said every existing agent and broker must re-verify their identity through Login.gov or ID.me, a step meant to close accounts that may have been compromised, shared or set up under false pretenses. Applications submitted with agent or broker help must now include a verifiable Social Security number or immigration document number for every applicant other than a newborn. CMS also said it is closing a technical gap that let an agent or broker be added to an application a consumer was supposed to complete on their own through HealthCare.gov, and it is standing up a new anti-fraud coordination group spanning the federally facilitated exchange and the state exchanges built on the federal platform. A companion Sept. 22 press release credited that coordination group to joint work between CMS and the Department of Health and Human Services, quoting CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz: “Every dollar lost to fraud is a dollar taken from hardworking taxpayers and the Americans these programs are intended to serve.”
What still operates normally for agents in good standing
None of the Sept. 22 changes revoke an existing Exchange Agreement or bar an agent who holds one from writing 2027 business. A household that would rather skip an agent altogether still has that option: HealthCare.gov’s state-by-state marketplace guide lists Navigators and local assisters alongside its agent and broker directory, and none of the Sept. 22 changes alter that alternative path. The moratorium closes registration only to newcomers, and the termination and notice-of-intent numbers describe agents CMS has already flagged as non-compliant rather than the broader workforce that sells marketplace plans every year. An agent’s registration status is not something a household can see just by looking at a business card or a website; it lives in CMS’s own systems, tied to the Exchange Agreement the fact sheet describes. For anyone weighing whether to use help signing up for 2027 coverage, the fact sheet’s own emphasis on missing Social Security numbers and unverified identities is the clearest description CMS has given of what its data flags as a warning sign in an agent’s history. CMS framed the registration moratorium, the terminations and the identity-proofing rules as pieces of one federal Marketplace anti-fraud program covering both the federally facilitated exchange used by most states and the state-based exchanges that rely on the federal enrollment platform, and it did not set an end date for the moratorium in the fact sheet, describing it only as temporary and tied to the risk pattern found in the 2026 registration data. That data point, more than 200 termination notices issued since January and 569 notices of intent issued this summer, is the enforcement record CMS is using to justify keeping new registrants out of the system until it can verify who they are.
Documenting who helped with an enrollment
The registration freeze and termination notices CMS announced target agents and brokers who lack a current agreement or mishandled applicant information; the notice itself does not identify which individual enrollees relied on one of the agents already removed from the system. The unfinished task for a household that used an agent this year is confirming who helped, what was submitted, and whether it matches the coverage they expected.
The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit includes a first-hour recovery plan and a fraud evidence and report log for organizing exactly that kind of paperwork trail.
Open the fraud evidence log in The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources.
