Trump sends $500 Obamacare refund checks to nearly one million Americans weeks before midterm elections

From the Newshound archive · first published 30 September 2026 · last updated 1 October 2026.

The Treasury Department began issuing $500 checks on Wednesday to nearly 950,000 Obamacare enrollees across 30 states, alongside a personal letter from President Donald Trump claiming that the Biden administration overcharged Americans to sustain HealthCare.gov. The majority of recipients have incomes exceeding 400% of the federal poverty line — around $64,000 a year for a single person — and lost their enhanced subsidies when Congress let them expire last year, in many cases causing premiums to double or triple. The payments land shortly before November's midterm elections, with several of the 30 eligible states hosting hotly contested races.

Texas and Florida are set to receive the highest number of checks, with an estimated 139,000 and 127,900 recipients respectively.

Democratic-leaning states including California, New York and Pennsylvania are excluded because they run their own independent exchanges rather than using the federal HealthCare.gov platform.

'You have paid into this flawed system, and now you are finally getting something back,' Trump wrote in the letter accompanying each check.