Palantir health data controversies

In July 2026, U.S. officials disclosed that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services had mistakenly transferred Medicaid records of millions of individuals to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, violating a court order. ICE then shared portions of the dataset with analytics firm Palantir, which uses the information in its ELITE system to identify non‑citizens for removal. After the breach became public through filings by state attorneys general and a federal judge, ICE deleted the file, though some copies remained, and the Justice Department admitted the data had been reshared. Palantir said the data had been purged.

A week later, NHS England confirmed that staff from Palantir Technologies could view identifiable patient information within the NHS Federated Data Platform because a data‑protection impact assessment had omitted this access. The National Data Guardian highlighted the oversight, and the NHS pledged to correct the documentation, work with privacy regulators, and improve transparency about supplier data access. Both incidents illustrate ongoing concerns about Palantir’s role in handling sensitive health data within government programmes in the United States and the United Kingdom.