As far as I know, Basic has ALWAYS been a separate program.

If you has previously use the same program, I suspect that you previously used Professional for 1040s, not Basic.

It's not merely "access", it is functionality.  Basic has very different navigation and functions than Professional.

As a side note, unless you are using both programs at the same time, downloading two programs does not use more CPU power or more RAM.  It does take up a little more hard drive space, but hard drive space is usually very abundant.