About 950,000 HealthCare.gov Enrollees in 30 States Who Paid Full Price Are Getting $500 Obamacare Refund Checks by Mail

Self-employed workers, early retirees and others who paid the full sticker price for a HealthCare.gov plan this year are finding an unusual piece of mail: a $500 check from the federal government. About 950,000 people are in line for one. The money began going out Sept. 30, and it is limited to unsubsidized enrollees in the 30 states that use the federal marketplace.

$500 per person, with no application

The White House announced the payments on Sept. 10. Its fact sheet on the “Working Families Obamacare Refunds” describes “a refund check of $500 per person” for Americans who do not receive premium assistance and therefore paid the full cost of the exchange “user fees” built into their premiums. The administration says nearly 1 million people qualify and frames the money as a return of excess fees collected under the previous administration.

The money is tied to the fee the federal marketplace charges to run HealthCare.gov. According to the fact sheet, the previous administration collected more in these user fees than it needed, and the cost was passed on to consumers through higher premiums. The White House describes the $500 checks as returning that surplus to the people who carried the full premium themselves. The fact sheet presents this as the administration’s account; it does not include an independent audit of the fee.

The checks started moving earlier than first planned. ABC News reported on Oct. 1 that an administration official said checks began going out on Wednesday, Sept. 30, to about 950,000 people, each accompanied by a letter from the administration. The official also said the largest numbers of recipients are in Texas and Florida, followed by Wisconsin, Arizona and Oregon.

No form is involved. A Mira explainer updated Oct. 3 notes that no application, claim process or deadline has been announced, and that the refund is $500 per eligible person rather than per household. A household with two unsubsidized adults on the same plan could see two payments. The explainer says the refund is tied to 2026 coverage, and whether earlier years count has not been made clear.

The 30 states on the list

Only states that use HealthCare.gov are covered, because those are the states where the federal government collected the user fee. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ 2026 open enrollment data page confirms that 30 states used HealthCare.gov for the 2026 season, while 21 exchanges ran their own platforms.

The 30 states 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.

Residents of the 21 state-run marketplaces are not part of this program, even if they paid full price for coverage. That group now includes Georgia and Illinois, which run their own exchanges, according to the Mira explainer.

Who is left out, even in those states

Most marketplace shoppers will not see a check. The healthinsurance.org guide to the refund notes that more than 19 million people have marketplace coverage, and most enrollees in the 30 states receive a premium subsidy, which takes them out of the group. Even a small subsidy disqualifies a person, according to the Mira explainer.

That leaves a narrower slice of people. ABC News reported that the primary recipients have incomes above 400% of the federal poverty level, along with some people at lower incomes who did not receive a subsidy. ABC put the poverty line at $15,960 a year for a single person in the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., which puts 400% at $63,840. Off-exchange buyers, people with job-based coverage, and Medicare and Medicaid enrollees are not part of it.

The checks have drawn criticism for that targeting. Gerard Anderson, a Johns Hopkins professor, told ABC News he doubts the payments reach the people most in need, noting that they do not target those hit hardest by the end of the enhanced ACA tax credits, which expired at the end of last year.

That shift in subsidies is one reason premiums are front of mind as open enrollment approaches. Employer coverage is under similar pressure, as a recent look at the nearly $7,500 workers pay each year for family coverage showed.

Taxes, scams and a separate insurer rebate

The IRS has not issued guidance specific to these checks. The Mira explainer says they are probably not taxable for most recipients, based on how the IRS treats insurer rebates for people who did not deduct their premiums, but self-employed people who deduct health insurance and those who itemize may want to check with a tax professional.

The $500 refund is also separate from the medical loss ratio rebate, sometimes called the 80/20 rebate, that comes from an insurer rather than the government. The Mira explainer notes a person could receive both.

Any payment program like this draws impostors. A caller or text that asks for a Social Security number, a bank login or a fee to “release” the $500 is not part of the federal program, which requires no application at all.

For people in the 30 states who paid full price and have not yet seen a check, the administration has not said how long delivery will take. ABC News reported that the timing for all checks to arrive was unclear. Because the payments are going out by mail, enrollees who have moved since signing up may want to confirm that their HealthCare.gov account lists a current mailing address.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: APK – CC BY 4.0/Wikimedia Commons