President Donald Trump has announced that the federal government is to send $500 refund checks to almost one million Americans beginning in October, framing the payments as money the Biden administration overcharged people through Obamacare.
The White House yesterday said the payments, labeled the ‘Working Families Obamacare Refunds’, are intended to refund Americans who faced higher premiums and who paid the full cost of their plans. Recipients in 30 states who buy health insurance through the federal marketplace and do not receive financial help will supposedly be eligible.
The $500 checks are not to be confused with the entirely separate $5,000 ‘Trump Dividend’ that the president promised all adult U.S. citizens earlier this week at the Republican midterm convection in Dallas. Nor does it have anything to do with the $2,000 tariff dividend Trump promised people as far back as November 2025.
Instead, this new pledge comes after the White House accused the Biden administration of overcharging Americans through Obamacare plan exchange “user fees”, passed on to consumers in the form of more expensive premiums.
Said fees reportedly funded the operation of the federal exchange “far in excess of what was needed to run the exchange”. As per the fact sheet presented by the White House, that resulted in excess money sitting in the system that was never returned to the people who paid it.
Via his latest promise, Trump outlined a plan to return $500 refund checks to those eligible, stating: “The government is going to pay the money directly to you.
“The big insurance companies lose and the people of our country win.”
Close to one million Americans across US 30 states use the federal exchange for their Obamacare markets. The states in question 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.
States that run their own exchanges, meanwhile, including California, New York, and Massachusetts, are not included.
Unlike the aforementioned promises of $2,000 being paid out to people (Trump began touting that in November of last year) and the truly dumbfounding $5,000 ‘Trump Dividend’ dependent on the Republicans winning both the House and Senate in this year’s midterms, the $500 ‘Working Families Obamacare Refunds’ is reported to be genuine and backed by concrete figures.
Payments are slated to begin going out at the start of October. The midterms, meanwhile, take place on November 3.
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