Assistance program
Basic Health Program (Affordable Care Act)
$48.5 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Insurance
- CFDA number
- 93.640
- What it does
- Section 1331 of the Affordable Care Act gives states the option of creating a Basic Health Program (BHP), a health benefits coverage program for low-income residents who would otherwise be eligible to purchase coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace. The program is for specified individuals who do not qualify for Medicaid but whose income does not exceed 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL).
- Who benefits
- The program is for specified individuals who do not qualify for Medicaid but whose income does not exceed 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL).
- Who applies
- Any State that submits a BHP Blueprint may be considered for certification by the Secretary of HHS.
- Authorized by
- Section 1331 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, (Pub. L. 111-148), and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Pub. L. 111.152, enacted March 30, 2010) which are collectively referred to as the Affordable Care Act.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Recipients
This program's money is paid out as non-itemized direct payments — USAspending records it under a single aggregate, so individual recipients aren't listed. The dollars and agencies above are complete; the recipient roster isn't part of the public record for programs like this.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments