Assistance program
Medicare Hospital Insurance
$3.2 Trillion 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
- 93.773
- What it does
- To provide hospital insurance protection for covered services to persons age 65 or above, to certain disabled persons and to individuals with chronic renal disease.
- Who benefits
- Persons age 65 or over and qualified disabled persons.
- Who applies
- Persons age 65 or over and certain disabled persons are eligible to receive hospital insurance benefits. Nearly all individuals who had reached the age of 65 before 1968 are eligible for Part A, including people not eligible for cash Social Security benefits. A person reaching the age of 65 from 1968 to the present, and who is not eligible for social security benefits, needs to have accumulated work credits (amount dependent on age) to qualify for hospital insurance benefits. Hospital insurance (Medicare Part A) is also available to persons aged 65 and over through payment of a monthly premium, which is currently $506 per month, effective January 1, 2023. A reduced Part A premium of $278 per month is applied to persons with 30 to 39 quarters in which they have paid into the social security system. This reduced Part A premium applies to their spouse, surviving spouse or divorced spouse as well. Federal employees began contributing toward Medicare hospital insurance coverage in 1983. Employees who have worked in the federal government prior to this year are still eligible to receive credit for prior non-contributory quarters of Federal employment. State and local government employees not already in Social Security-covered positions and who were hired on or after April 1, 1986 also contribute toward Medicare hospital insurance coverage. Although states may request agreements to cover individuals employed prior to April 1, 1986, no credit is given toward establishing Medicare entitlement for prior employment. Persons under the age of 65 who have been entitled to Social Security or Railroad Retirement disability benefits for at least 29 months are also eligible to receive hospital insurance benefits, as are any individuals who have been diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD).
- Authorized by
- Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148)
- American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Public Law 111-5, Title XVIII of the Social Security Act, Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (Public Law 111-152)
- 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