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Medicare

$1.7 trillion of gross federal outlays were reported under the Medicare heading in fiscal year 2026, the 1 largest of 18 budget functions. Department of Health and Human Services accounts for 100.0% of it.

American Factbook Research

Identifiers

Budget function
Medicare

The record

Reported figures for Medicare, each linked to its source
Outlays · FY2026Gross outlays, not net. At this grain they are routinely negative for some agencies, which is why nothing here calls them money spent.$1,705,094,669,272USD, gross
Obligations · FY2026$1,693,302,806,634USD
Rank among budget functions · FY20261 of 18by outlays
Share of all budget functions · FY202619.4%percent of outlays under every heading
Agencies reporting under it · FY20262agencies

Agencies reporting under this heading

1 more column on a wider screen

Agencies reporting outlays under Medicare, fiscal year 2026
RankAgencyOutlays
1Department of Health and Human Services$1,705,094,650,328
2Social Security Administration$18,944

An agency with a top-tier code and no name reports this function to the account data and does not appear in the award table the names come from. Its figure is the publisher’s; the missing name is ours.

What this data cannot show

  • A budget function is reported per agency and never nationally. The figure at the top of this page is a sum over the rows in the table below, not a total the publisher published.
  • Gross outlays are not net outlays and neither is money spent in the sense a reader means. An agency’s figure can be negative when it recovers more than it pays out under a heading in the period.
  • The fiscal year is not over. These are the figures reported so far.
  • Budget functions describe purpose, not programme. Money under one heading can pay for work a reader would file under several, and one programme can appear under more than one heading in different agencies.

Related

Sources

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