Cynthia Cox

It's gone out to about a million Americans so far across 30 different states, and this is for people that don't get premium assistance.

With these checks was a personal letter that the president wrote, and it says in part, "I'm proud to return your money to you, and I will never stop fighting to put the American people first, restore affordability, protect your hard-earned money, and lower the cost of healthcare." Now, I spoke with Cynthia Cox about this.

She's the director of the Affordable Care Act program at KFF, and she said that this move from the administration is unprecedented.

But she also explained how this can help Americans and how these checks will factor into overall rising healthcare costs.

The group of people receiving the checks live in one of the 30 states that use healthcare.gov as their Obamacare website and make too much money to receive premium subsidies.

Cynthia Cox directs the program on the Affordable Care Act at the health research organization KFF.

Essentially, what the Trump administration is doing is taking some user fee dollars that insurance companies have paid to the federal government to operate healthcare.gov.

Usually that money is used for community groups who help people understand their options and enroll.

Critics of the move argue that CMS cast too wide a net and could be removing coverage for many legitimate cases.

Cynthia Cox, ACA researcher at health policy center KFF said, quote, there is widespread agreement that unauthorized enrollments should be canceled.

The question is whether these were all indeed unauthorized enrollments and whether this was the appropriate process for determining whether an enrollee was legitimate or not, end quote.

Next up, you'll hear from the left and the right on the ACA cancellations.

Trump administration officials explained in a press conference that they suspected fraudster brokers had signed up people who weren't eligible or who didn't even know they had been signed up.

The fight against fraudulent brokers has been going on for years, says Cynthia Cox of the nonprofit health research organization KFF, but she questioned this approach.

There could have been collateral damage here.

If someone didn't file a claim, she points out, they might have just been healthy, and if they didn't respond to the notice in time, they might have just missed it.