Will you benefit from the $500 Obamacare refunds? Find out here

The Trump administration began sending $500 refund checks Wednesday to more than 950,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees, an administration official told CNBC. The money is aimed largely at people whose incomes are too high for federal premium help.

The White House fact sheet says the refunds go to people who receive no premium assistance and live in the 30 states that use the federal exchange. The administration describes the payments as a return of “overcharges” collected under the Biden administration.

The biggest group is enrollees earning more than 400% of the federal poverty line, roughly $63,000 for an individual and $129,000 for a family of four, the official told CNBC. The Times reported that the group includes farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs and early retirees who lack job-based coverage. They lost all federal assistance when the enhanced subsidies expired at the end of 2025. Families with more than one affected person can receive multiple checks, the official said.

Texas and Florida will see the most payments, with 139,000 and 127,900 recipients, according to federal data shared with CNBC.

Enrollees in 20 states and the District of Columbia, including California and New York, will get nothing. Those jurisdictions run their own marketplaces, and insurers there do not pay the federal fees, the Times reported.

Lower-income enrollees are largely left out. The Times reported that people who saw costs rise after the subsidies lapsed, but who still qualify for some help, will not benefit. The official told CNBC that “some people” between 100% and 400% of the poverty line will also get a check, without saying how many. Marketplace enrollment has fallen by nearly 3 million people since 2025, according to KFF, and the Times reported that people who left won’t receive refunds. Why they left is disputed. Health policy researchers tie the drop to higher premiums after the enhanced subsidies expired, while the Trump administration has said the rolls were inflated by enrollment fraud. A Tulane health policy professor said KFF’s figures count only people who paid premiums, which makes fraud an unlikely main explanation.

How much the check helps is also disputed. President Trump said in a video that $500 would cover the premium spike “in many cases,” CNN reported. Cynthia Cox of KFF, a health research group, told CNN the increase could easily run $500 a month. The Times reported that the $500 exceeds what recipients personally paid in excess fees, and that it returns a disproportionate share of the money to those above the 400% threshold.

The premise is contested too. KFF’s Larry Levitt told the Times that the Biden administration lowered the marketplace fees, and that they were not a major driver of this year’s price increases. Insurers have asked regulators for average increases of about 15% next year, the Times reported.

Critics have called the plan a “gimmick,” the Associated Press reported. The AP also reported that it is unclear whether the payments require congressional approval. White House officials told the Times they have the legal authority to use the money.

Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told CNBC the move is more about the midterm elections, now just over a month away, than about health policy.