(TNND) — Health and Human Services said analysts have found nearly 3 million Americans who might be improperly benefiting from two or more government health programs.

And now Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is taking steps to confirm the duplicate enrollments and delete them, saying it could save taxpayers $14 billion annually.

Federal health officials said an analysis of enrollment data identified millions of Americans either enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program in multiple states or simultaneously enrolled in both Medicaid/CHIP and a subsidized Affordable Care Act exchange plan.

Medicaid provides health coverage to millions of Americans, including eligible low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults, and people with disabilities.

"Under the Trump Administration, we will no longer tolerate waste, fraud, and abuse at the expense of our most vulnerable citizens,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a news release.

Federal officials said they will work with states to prune duplicate benefits.

Michael Cannon, the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, said HHS' estimate of duplicate enrollment is "entirely plausible."

Confusion over eligibility rules, churn among enrollees, income changes, moves, and changes in family situations can all lead to improperly redundant enrollment.

States administer Medicaid and CHIP. Both states and the federal government administer Affordable Care Act coverage, also known as “Obamacare.”

For example, Cannon said a Medicaid beneficiary’s income could rise to the point that they’re no longer eligible, so they move onto a federally facilitated and subsidized Obamacare plan. The transition might be aided by a broker, who makes a commission. But no one ever tells the state Medicaid agency that the person has enrolled in a new plan.

So, both the federal and state governments could end up paying for health coverage for one person in that example.

“And so, it just makes sense that people can be on the rolls in two different places at the same time,” Cannon said.

But finding duplicate enrollments costs money and manpower.

And Cannon said states don’t have the financial incentive to do it.

The federal government picks up about two-thirds of the cost of Medicaid, including 90% of Medicaid expansion, Cannon said.

That means states could only recoup cents on the dollar of the total savings.

Plus, Cannon said, going after Medicaid dollars could invite political blowback from both enrollees and industry players who make gobs of money off the program.

“Medicaid and other government-run health programs are wildly careless with taxpayer dollars,” Cannon said. “Which is one of the reasons they're driving the federal government toward a debt crisis, and one of the reasons why health care is so expensive in the United States. So, it is absolutely crucial that Medicaid and other government health programs go after wasteful health spending, and this should be one of the easiest ways to do that.”

CMS will provide states with a list of people who are enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP in two or more states and ask them to recheck eligibility, according to HHS.

CMS also notified people it believes are enrolled in both Medicaid or CHIP and a federally facilitated Obamacare plan with a subsidy to ask them to disenroll, end their subsidy or come up with documentation to show that they aren’t benefiting from two programs at once.

CMS will ask states to take a similar approach with people suspected of double enrollment involving a state-based exchange plan.

“We are going to work with states to identify individuals enrolled in multiple programs and fix the duplicate enrollment problem to save taxpayers billions of dollars, while minimizing inappropriate coverage loss,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the CMS administrator, said in the news release.