HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s low-cost, basic health insurance program for more than 40,000 low-income adults may be at an end.

The administration of outgoing Gov. Ed Rendell says money for the adultBasic program will run out at the end of February. And Gov.-elect Tom Corbett, who takes office next week, wants the state’s nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield health insurers to allow adultBasic enrollees into their more expensive “Special Care” programs, Corbett spokesman Kevin Harley said Tuesday.

The Special Care programs, begun in 1992, offer monthly premiums for low-income adults and families at rates of at least several times the $36 average adultBasic monthly premium.

“Basically what the Blues would do is allow the 40,000 to 45,000 people on adultBasic to transfer into the Special Care program, so they wouldn’t go without insurance,” Harley said. A Rendell administration spokesman criticized that plan as inadequate and too expensive for people who qualify for adultBasic.

AdultBasic enrollees “are people for whom Special Care is out of reach,” Rendell’s press secretary Gary Tuma said. “It’s not a substitute for adultBasic, so they’re just telling people about a program that already exists and that they can’t afford.”

Officials at Highmark and Independence Blue Cross said they cannot begin offering adultBasic enrollees access to Special Care until they receive official word that adultBasic is at an end.

Asked whether this is the end of the 9-year-old adultBasic, Harley pointed out that the state is facing a projected $4 billion to $5 billion budget deficit in the fiscal year beginning July 1.

He also said the Legislature may have something to say, although a top aide to Senate Banking and Insurance Committee Chairman Don White, R-Indiana, said it was hard to imagine.

“Given the fiscal constraints, I don’t know what the Legislature can do about it,” said Joe Pittman, White’s chief of staff.

The bare-bones health insurance doesn’t include dental care or prescription drugs, and is offered to low-income adults who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, and are too young to qualify for Medicare.

AdultBasic was to cost $164 million in this fiscal year, but funding fell about $55 million short, Rendell administration officials say.