Do you celebrate an arsonist who brings a cup of water to a fire they started? Is the president a hero for cutting small, health care relief checks to people struggling under his destructive policies that include the largest rollback of federal support for health care in American history?
Will Ohioans being wiped out by spiking premiums, out-of-pocket costs, and less medical coverage be wowed by what Ohio AFL-CIO chief Tim Burga called Trump’s attempt to “buy votes” weeks before the midterms?
Or will voters view the legally questionable windfall from a convicted felon the way Burga does — as a lame PR stunt that does little to move the pre-election needle and “reeks of desperation”?
You decide why a president, facing historic lows in approval ratings, rushed ACA and Medicare checks to millions of Americans with campaign-like letters boasting about his greatness and signed in Sharpie Marker.
You weigh why the Affordable Care Act money was only doled out to a subset of enrollees — most Obamacare enrollees will not receive any — who also (by pure coincidence) live in many states with tightly contested U.S. Senate races.
Scrutinize, too, the propaganda notes attached to Trump’s $500 Obamacare “refund” checks.
The missives sent to households in prime political battlegrounds (falsely) accused the Biden administration of “overcharging” Americans for their health care and touted Trump’s commitment to “put America first, restore affordability, protect your hard-earned money, and lower the cost of healthcare.”
Put a pin in those easily debunked claims.
Trump also offered electioneering cash (attempted bribes?) to 20 million traditional Medicare Part B enrollees to offset monthly premiums of about $200 for a program that covers outpatient care, doctor visits, preventable care, etc.
Like the narrow scope of insured who received ACA checks, Trump’s one-time payments of $90 for eligible seniors excludes roughly 35 million Medicare Advantage enrollees, (who make up over half of Medicare beneficiaries) plus other people with disabilities and low-income Medicare recipients.
This midterm sweetener will cost the government $2 billion and come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, created by Congress to improve program management and conduct oversight of contracts and contractors.
The funding has been diverted before to expand healthcare coverage through the ACA, but it has never been used to directly pay recipients.
Is any of this legal? Trump writing Medicare and ACA checks without Congress? He has thrown another frontal assault on Congress’ constitutional power of the purse, but no court has blocked either payment yet.
Putting the rule of law aside, (as Trump does on the daily) the political impact of his money giveaway in the waning days of the 2026 midterm campaign is negligible in Ohio.
Don’t get me wrong. The estimated 70,000 Ohioans who got $500 ACA checks, out of the roughly 336,000 Ohio residents who still get their health insurance from the ACA marketplace, cashed them.
So did the 748,000 seniors in Ohio — less than a third of the total 2.5 million Medicare recipients in the state — who received Trump’s legally dubious $90 checks.
But the Trump pay-outs to seduce voters clobbered economically by Medicare Part B monthly premiums (that went up nearly 10% in 2026 and will climb again in 2027), or ACA premiums (set to jump 14.7% next year by the 11 remaining insurance companies on Ohio’s federal marketplace) probably won’t cause Ohioans priced out of medical care to swoon.
They know the truth. They crunch the numbers over strained budgets. Trump, and every Republican in Congress, gutted their health care funding to finance a trillion-dollar tax break for billionaires and corporations.
Last year GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill also blocked healthcare subsidies that lowered health insurance costs for over 20 million Americans.
Monthly ACA premiums more than doubled for many enrollees. Some 160,000 Ohioans, (a third of those enrolled in the state) who simply could not make those monthly premium payments, lost their healthcare coverage.
Ohio led the nation in the highest percentage of ACA enrollment decline with a staggering 32.4% drop-off between February 2025 and February 2026.
Now the state faces more than $33 billion in lost Medicaid funding over the next decade_,_ thanks again to Trump and his compliant congressional Republicans, including Ohio U.S. Sens. Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, who voted for the ridiculously named One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
More than 3 million Ohioans, nearly 1 in 4 residents, depend on Medicaid, including 40% of all children in the state.
Trump’s signature healthcare package, which slashed federal Medicaid funding by $911 billion over a ten-year period, could soon end government-sponsored health insurance for hundreds of thousands Medicaid users in Ohio just trying to get by.
When new OBBB Medicaid work rules kick in January 1, researchers estimate millions of working Americans could lose their coverage.
The federal changes — which create heavy administrative and procedural burdens that often strip eligible low-income adults of health insurance — are expected to purge up to 356,000 Ohioans from Medicaid.
As coverage falls access to health care across Ohio disappears.
Eleven rural and safety-net hospitals in Ohio face risk of closure because of Trump’s 2025 spending law cuts to Medicaid.
Hospitals across the country have already begun cutting services and jobs in response to the devastating measure heralded by the president and his Republican puppets on the stump as their chief legislative accomplishment.
But go ahead, mail out checks to mitigate the damages wrought by the sender. Just don’t expect voters to be dazzled by a drop in the bucket that does nothing to put out the fire.
This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.
