Nearly one million Americans will soon receive $500 checks from the federal government as a refund for alleged overcharges on the Affordable Care Act’s federal exchange for buying health insurance.
Starting Wednesday, the Treasury Department will begin to send checks, along with letters signed by President Donald Trump, to more than 950,000 Americans in 30 states.
Trump announced the $500 Obamacare refund checks on September 10 in a video released by the White House, claiming the refunds would correct overcharges incurred under the Biden administration’s Obamacare exchange and Healthcare.gov website.
“For years, the Biden administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov,” Trump wrote in the letter, according to USA Today. “That money belongs to hard-working Americans, not the Government, and now I’m returning it to you!”
The 80-year-old president has long opposed and attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, signed into law by Barack Obama in 2010. The landmark bill overhauled the U.S. health system by expanding coverage, adding consumer protections and creating marketplaces for individuals to shop for plans, among other changes.
The Trump administration has claimed that under Biden, consumers paid higher insurance premiums than what was needed to run the exchange. Trump officials have accused the Biden administration of then sitting on the surplus funds.
The checks come weeks before the November midterm elections, where affordability will be a key issue.
A major change to Obamacare came late last year when the ACA’s enhanced premium subsidies expired after Trump and Republicans in Congress refused to pass an extension.
The move made insurance more expensive for millions, and about one in 10 Americans enrolled in ACA plans later opted out of health insurance altogether, according to a March KFF survey. Now, for the first time in five years, less than half of Americans can consistently afford health care, a June Gallup poll found.
The 30 states where Americans will receive the $500 refund checks are states that do not operate their own ACA insurance plan exchanges and rely on federal exchanges, according to the White House.
The states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Americans in the other 20 states will not receive checks because their states run their exchanges and the federal government did not collect user fees.
“I am proud to return your money to you, and I will never stop fighting to put the American People FIRST, restore Affordability, protect your hard-earned money, and lower the Cost of Healthcare,” Trump said in the letter sent out with the checks.
The checks also come about a week after Vice President JD Vance and other Trump administration officials announced they planned to remove 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees, alleging those individuals were fraudulently enrolled — or just didn’t exist.
“We’re actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them,” Vance said. The cancellation was approximately 315,000 enrollments covering 760,000 people.
About 19.2 million Americans were enrolled in ACA marketplace health plans as of early 2026, according to the Department of Health and Human Services website.
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