WASHINGTON — About 20.8 million people enrolled in traditional Medicare are eligible for a one-time $90 payment this month to help cover their Part B premiums, under a plan President Donald Trump announced late Friday on social media, weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services laid out the details Saturday. Most recipients will get the money by direct deposit around Oct. 8, followed by an email or letter from Trump in mid-October, the agency said. People without direct deposit will be mailed a $90 Treasury Department check later in the month.
In a fact sheet, CMS said the rebate is meant “to put healthcare dollars back where they belong – in the hands of our Medicare beneficiaries.”
The payments will be drawn from the Medicare Improvement Fund, set up by Congress in 2008 to finance upgrades to traditional, fee-for-service Medicare. The White House says no administration has made payments from the fund before, and CMS says Trump is the first president to use it to lower costs for enrollees. Congress, meanwhile, has drawn on the fund about 20 times to offset other spending, including $20.7 billion that helped pay for the Affordable Care Act in 2010, according to CMS.
Who qualifies
To be eligible, enrollees in Original Medicare Part B must live in the United States, must not get help with premiums from Medicaid and must not pay the higher, income-based premium surcharge, according to CMS. People in private Medicare Advantage plans are not eligible. KFF, a health policy research group, estimates that more than half of people eligible for Medicare are in Medicare Advantage plans, the AP reported.
Enrollees can check their eligibility by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227), CMS said. Starting Oct. 15, the Social Security Administration will answer questions about payment status at 1-800-772-1213.
In his post, Trump said his administration had already lowered Part B premiums significantly. CNN has reported that the standard monthly premium rose $17.90, or nearly 10%, this year to $202.90.
The rebates are the latest in a series of payments Trump has promised before the midterms. Last month, he said about 1 million people with Affordable Care Act coverage would get $500 rebate checks, and the administration began mailing them Thursday, CNN reported. Trump has also pledged $5,000 for every adult if Republicans keep control of Congress, a promise that the AP noted would need congressional approval and would probably cost upward of $1 trillion.
KFF executive vice president Larry Levitt, who leads the group’s health policy work, told the AP that no earlier administration had used the fund this way. “President Trump seems to have hit on a midterm strategy of using little-known pots of money to send checks to people facing increased health care costs,” Levitt told CNN.
Voters 65 and older are the most reliable age group at the polls, CNN noted, and Trump carried them by 1 percentage point in 2024, according to the network’s exit polling.
What’s next
With direct deposits due around Oct. 8 and paper checks later in October, both forms of payment are expected to reach recipients before Election Day, NBC News reported. Watch for whether the White House announces more payments before Nov. 3 and how lawmakers in both parties respond to its use of the Medicare fund.
