Brue Hoyt did a double-take when he got a letter from the U.S. Treasury Department on Monday. Was it junk mail? Did he mess up his taxes?
Then he opened the envelope. Inside was a letter bearing President Donald Trump’s signature along with an enclosed $1,500 check.
“For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov,” the letter said. “That money belongs to hard-working Americans, not the Government, and now, I am returning it to you!”
Hoyt looked it up and realized he was one of an estimated 65,700 Ohioans to get what the Trump administration is terming an “Obamacare rebate check.”
“I didn’t even know this was a thing until I got this,” Hoyt, who owns a pest control business in Columbus, told Signal Statewide.
Hoyt is among the estimated 950,000 people across the country to whom the Trump administration is mailing these checks. They are hitting mailboxes – including in many states with hotly contested U.S. Senate races like Ohio – just weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
Checks going to 30 states
The White House announced the mailing on Sept. 12 in a press release that describes issuing $500 payments to nearly 1 million people as a repayment of surplus money generated by Affordable Care Act user fees.
The press release says the payments will go to ACA enrollees in 30 states – including Ohio – that manage Obamacare plans through the federal marketplace rather than operating their own state-level exchanges.
Those eligible to receive the rebate must live in one of these states and be enrolled in an ACA plan while not qualifying for income-based subsidies. The income criteria cuts off at 400% the federal poverty limit, or $128,600 for a family of four.
Due to how eligibility for the checks was established, recipients include voters in states with some of the key U.S. Senate races this election cycle – Alaska, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas. Reuters estimated that 71% of the payments will go to these states, plus several more with hotly contested governor’s races. Trump also has promised to pay $5,000 to every American if Republicans hold the House and Senate in the November election in a political climate expected to favor Democrats, and last week the White House announced plans to issue $90 “rebate checks” to 20 million Medicare Part B recipients.
Mailing follows 2026 premium spike
Some who are getting these Obamacare rebate checks now also saw their insurance premiums go up sharply this year, specifically as a result of the Republican-controlled Congress opting to let enhanced Biden-era ACA subsidies expire.
Hoyt is among those people. He said his premiums climbed this year from $700 to $1,700 a month after the enhanced premiums went away. He said he believes the $1,500 check reflects that there are three people ($500 times three) on his family plan.
Hoyt said he views the check as a “political stunt,” although he still plans to cash it.
“You cost me $12,000 more and you cut me a $1,500 check,” said Hoyt, a Democratic-leaning voter whom Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown recruited Hoyt to participate in a campaign roundtable last year highlighting rising healthcare costs. “This is a bribe check. This is a vote bribe check. They’re going to have to pay me more than that.”
Brian O’Rourke, a senior healthcare policy analyst for the Health Policy Institute of Ohio, said in an email that 83% of Ohio’s hundreds of thousands of Obamacare enrollees don’t qualify for the $500 checks because they still receive some form of subsidies.
But for most of those who do qualify, many will be in the same boat as Hoyt – the check not covering the extra insurance costs they’re paying this year.
“The main takeaway (besides political commentary related to timing before the midterms, which is not HPIO’s area) is that these checks, in most cases, do not fully cover the premium increases that occurred this year when the enhanced subsidies expired,” O’Rourke said.
