Every October, the same headline shows up: your Social Security raise is coming, and Medicare is going to eat it. This year the raise is 3.6%, announced October 14, and the headline is already back.
I ran the numbers, because that’s apparently my hobby now. The average retired worker gets about $75 more a month, roughly $900 a year. The Medicare Trustees projected the standard Part B premium at $209.50 for next year, up from $202.90 in 2026. That’s $6.60 a month. So Medicare takes about nine cents of every raise dollar, if the projection holds.
Nine cents isn’t nothing. It’s also not the raise vanishing, which is what half the coverage implies. Two quick caveats: the $209.50 is a projection, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is expected to confirm the real number this month. Averages hide plenty of people, too. If your benefit is small, the math looks different.
Here’s what bugs me more. Go back one year. The Part B premium was $185 in 2025 and jumped to $202.90 in 2026. That’s $17.90 a month, close to 10%, and nobody got to vote on it. A 3.5% increase this time looks gentle only because last year’s was so rough.
I don’t have a problem paying into a program that covers real health care for older people. That’s the kind of shared good I’m happy to fund. My problem is the same one I keep having with Washington: the number goes up, nobody explains where the money goes, and the answer is always that we need more of it. A government that sent out $186 billion it shouldn’t have in a single year hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt on where Medicare dollars end up.
So what should you actually do? Wait for the official premium announcement, then check your own benefit statement instead of trusting an average. Multiply your current monthly benefit by 3.6%, subtract the premium increase, and you have your real raise. It takes two minutes. It’ll tell you more than any headline.
The raise is real. The premium fight is real too, just smaller this year than advertised.
My two cents: cheer the 3.6%, check your math, and keep asking why health costs always seem to rise faster than the thing that’s supposed to cover them.