Assistance program
Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage
$988.0 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Direct Payments for Specified Use
- CFDA number
- 93.770
- What it does
- To provide prescription drugs to Medicare beneficiaries through their voluntary participation in prescription drug plans, with an additional subsidy provided to lower-income beneficiaries.
- Who benefits
- Eligible beneficiaries include individuals who are entitled to Medicare benefits under Part A or enrolled in Part B and who reside in the plan's service area. Individuals in a Medicare Advantage Plan with Part D coverage may not be separately enrolled in a stand alone prescription drug plan.
- Who applies
- An entity organized and licensed under State law as a risk-bearing entity eligible to offer health insurance in each State in which it is to offer a plan, meeting the requirements in 42 CFR 423.504 and 42 CFR 423.505. The entity may offer prescription drug coverage in conjunction with a Medicare Advantage plan or as a separate standalone benefit.
- Authorized by
- Authorized under Part D of Title XVIII of the Social Security Act.
- Program site
- http://www.cms.hhs.gov ↗
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