President Donald Trump said Thursday that his administration would issue $500 rebate checks to some Americans who were purportedly “overcharged” under the Affordable Care Act, a move that would provide little to no relief to the millions of people impacted by surging health insurance premiums.
The White House said in a fact sheet that around a million Americans in 30 states would receive rebate checks, beginning next month—just weeks before the November midterms. Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, ripped the rebate plan as “an absolute joke,” calling $500 “a drop in the bucket compared to what Americans are paying because Trump and Republicans gutted healthcare to bankroll massive tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations.”
Woodhouse was referring to a Republican budget measure, signed into law last summer by Trump, that enacted more than $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.
The GOP also declined last year to extend enhanced ACA subsidies that helped reduce costs for tens of millions of Americans, sending premiums skyrocketing. Some families have seen annual premium increases in the thousands of dollars, leading many to drop marketplace coverage entirely. ACA premiums are set to surge by double digits for a second consecutive year in 2027.
“At a time when people are scraping by to keep up with the high cost of groceries, rent, and healthcare, this $500 gimmick won’t even begin to dig them out of the hole that Trump and Republicans created,” said Woodhouse.
The White House said ACA enrollees who “do not receive premium assistance” and who live in states that “use the federal exchange for the operations of their Obamacare markets” would be eligible for a rebate check, meaning the payments would disproportionately benefit enrollees with higher incomes in red states.
“The vast majority of ACA enrollees won’t get $500 from the Trump administration, including: those who still get premium subsidies, though what they’re paying has gone up a lot with expiration of enhanced tax credits. And, those in mostly blue states that run their own exchanges,” noted Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF. “There are 19.2 million ACA enrollees. The Trump administration is talking about sending $500 rebate checks to fewer than one million of them.”
Policy experts disputed the Trump administration’s claim that Americans were “overcharged” due to the Biden administration’s “gross mismanagement” of the ACA. As The Associated Press reported:
Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, said it’s entirely possible that the funds Trump has promised came from fees collected during Trump’s first term. His first administration collected more user fees from insurers than it spent, resulting in an estimated $1 billion in unspent funds, according to KFF analysis.
It is unclear whether the $500 rebate represents what each enrollee may have overpaid, where the money for the rebates would come from, and whether it requires congressional approval for disbursement.
The White House’s rebate check pledge came as Trump also vowed to send $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the November midterms, a promise that was widely derided.
“The ‘Trump dividends’ scam is just Trump’s latest attempt to distract the country from the Republican affordability crisis,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). “Trump promised he would lower prices, and instead he keeps mashing the ‘make stuff more expensive button.’ The American people will not be fooled.”