Trump to send $500 rebate checks to nearly one million Obamacare enrollees
By Tami Luhby, CNN
(CNN) — A day after promising to send $5,000 dividend payments to all Americans, President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would distribute $500 rebate checks to nearly one million Affordable Care Act enrollees in 30 states.
In a video posted on the White House X account, Trump said that these Obamacare policyholders were “wrongly overcharged” during the Biden administration – a claim that some experts dispute.
“Our administration is doing the right thing and giving the money back to the people who were wrongly ripped off,” he said.
Eligible enrollees are those living in the 30 states that used the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, and did not qualify for premium subsidies. (The vast majority of the ACA’s enrollees are subsidized.) The checks will start being sent in October.
The announcement comes at a time when many Obamacare enrollees are struggling to maintain their coverage – or have dropped their policies – after congressional Republicans allowed the enhanced ACA premium subsidies to expire at the end of last year. That sent premium payments skyrocketing for many enrollees, particularly middle-income folks, for 2026.
Premiums are set to jump again for 2027. Policyholders will learn how much more they’ll have to pay when open enrollment starts on November 1, just before the midterm elections. Healthcare affordability – including the lapsing of the enhanced subsidies and the GOP’s slashing of Medicaid funding in Trump’s domestic policy package – is expected to be among voters’ top concerns.
Unspent fees
The rebates will be funded from fees that participating Obamacare insurers pay to support the federal ACA exchanges’ operations, according to a White House factsheet. The fees, which insurers pass along to enrollees in the form of higher premiums, also pay for marketing, outreach and enrollment assistance, which Trump has slashed in office.
About $1.2 billion in unspent fees had accumulated when former President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, according to an analysis by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group. The money had been adding up largely because the first Trump administration greatly reduced spending on enrollment assistance, marketing, the healthcare.gov website and the federal ACA call center.
The Biden administration subsequently announced it would pour about $500 billion into these ACA operations. Enrollment roughly doubled during his term to nearly 22 million people, thanks in large part to the enhanced subsidies, which Biden signed into in early 2021.
The current Trump administration is reducing the fees, which it argues will help lower premiums.
In his video, where Trump also urged Congress to pass his healthcare plan, the president said that the $500 rebate will cover the spike in premiums “in many cases.”
At least one expert disagreed.
“It could easily be $500 a month more that they’re having to spend,” Cynthia Cox, director of KFF’s Program on the ACA, told CNN.
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