$500 Refund Checks Are Going Out in 30 States for Nearly 1 Million Americans. Are You Getting One?
A government refund sounds like a settled matter: you overpaid, and someone is giving the money back. This one is more complicated. Starting Sept. 30, the Treasury began mailing $500 checks to roughly 950,000 people who bought health insurance on the federal marketplace without subsidies, and the White House calls it a refund of overcharges. Not everyone agrees that is what it is.
The checks are paid for by what the White House calls surplus user fees. Treasury is sending $500 to more than 950,000 people in 30 states, drawn from a pool of roughly $500 million, the White House says. Each check comes with a letter from the president. “For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov,” Trump wrote. The one-time payments are separate from monthly premiums or tax credits.
Those are the facts the White House has announced. The argument is over the label. The White House says enrollees were overcharged. Health policy experts say the fees pay for real costs of running the marketplace. How a federal exchange funds itself, and where this surplus came from, decides which description fits. That answer changes how the $500 should be read.
The White House Says Fees Overshot. Health Policy Experts Say They Fund Real Costs.
The money at the center of this dispute is a user fee paid by insurers. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services charges the fee as a percentage of premiums to run the federal exchanges, and insurers build it into the prices they charge. The White House says the exchanges collected more than they needed. The fee has fallen for most of the past decade, reaching 1.5% of premiums in 2025.
Critics dispute the word overcharged. Cynthia Cox, who directs the ACA program at KFF, a health policy research group, told Reuters that the fees “help pay for the Healthcare.gov website, its call center and grants to ‘navigator’ groups.” In her account, the money funds services enrollees use. ABC News also reported that Trump made his claim about an unused surplus without evidence.
Both descriptions can describe the same fee. The administration points to what was collected relative to what was needed. Critics point to what the money pays for. For the person opening an envelope, the practical question is simpler: is there a check with your name on it? Eligibility is narrower than the headline suggests, and it depends on where you live and how you bought coverage.
Residents of 20 States and D.C. Are Left Out, and Most Checks Go to Higher Earners
Geography decides eligibility first. The checks go only to people in the 30 states that rely on federally run exchanges, where the federal government collected the user fees. People in the 20 states that run their own exchanges, and in Washington, D.C., get nothing. The administration has shared counts for only a few states, including 127,900 recipients in Florida and 65,700 in Ohio, and says Texas has the most.
Income comes second. A White House official says most checks are going to people above 400% of the federal poverty level, which is $62,600 for a single person or $128,600 for a family of four, though some lower-income people who got no subsidy will also receive one. The Center for American Progress counts about 1.5 million people in these states who bought 2026 plans without help, which suggests roughly a third may not get a check.
One detail is still unsettled. The White House did not immediately say whether the checks go to people who went without tax credits in 2025 or in 2026, so the true count of people left out is uncertain. Checks come by mail or direct deposit, and a family with several affected members can receive several payments. All of it unfolds against a year in which what marketplace enrollees pay rose sharply.
Critics on the Left and a Conservative Analyst Question the Checks for Different Reasons
The checks arrive in a year when marketplace coverage got more expensive for many people. The enhanced tax credits that extended help to people earning above 400% of the poverty level expired at the end of 2025, according to the Commonwealth Fund. KFF reports that what enrollees pay after tax credits rose 58% on average from 2025 to 2026, to $178 a month. Federal data show enrollment fell 13% in the year through February.
Critics on the left say the checks miss the larger problem. The Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, argues that the payments pale next to the enhanced tax credits that were not extended, and that millions of lower- and middle-income enrollees “whose costs also increased will get nothing.” The White House describes the payments as a refund of surplus fees.
A conservative analyst questions the method for a different reason. Chris Jacobs, a former House Republican Conference policy adviser, wrote in The Federalist that the refund plan makes sense, but that it may be “more effective and efficient to further reduce user fees going forward.” The dispute is bigger than $500. It is about whether the answer to a high price is a refund afterward, a lower fee up front, or a larger subsidy.