Medicare Costs in 2026: Part B Premium, Deductibles and What Changed

The standard Medicare Part B premium for 2026 is $202.90 per month, and the Part B annual deductible is $283. Both figures come from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services fact sheet published on 14 November 2025 (opens in a new tab), and both are up from 2025, when the standard premium was $185.00 and the deductible was $257.

That is an increase of $17.90 a month on the premium and $26 on the deductible. If you have your premium deducted from a Social Security payment, you will not see a separate bill — but you will see the effect, because the increase lands in the same January payment as the annual cost-of-living adjustment.

These are United States federal program rules. Medicare cost-sharing amounts are set nationally, so the figures below do not vary by state — though what a Medicare Advantage plan or a Medigap policy costs on top of them very much does.

The 2026 Medicare cost table

Every amount below is the standard, nationally set figure for 2026, shown against the 2025 equivalent.

Source: CMS, 2026 Medicare Parts A & B Premiums and Deductibles (opens in a new tab).

The Part A inpatient deductible rose $60 year over year. Note that it is charged per benefit period, not per year — a point covered below, and one of the most commonly misunderstood features of the program.

What each part actually costs you

Medicare is not one bill. Its parts are separate cost structures, and they behave differently enough that averaging them together produces a meaningless number.

Part A — hospital insurance

Part A covers inpatient hospital stays, skilled nursing facility care following a qualifying hospital stay, some home health care and hospice. For most people it carries no monthly premium, because they or a spouse paid Medicare payroll taxes across a working career. What it does carry is cost-sharing when you use it.

Cost-sharing works in tiers within a benefit period. You pay the $1,736 inpatient deductible first. Days beyond the initial covered stretch carry a daily coinsurance of $434, and if a stay runs past that, you begin drawing on a limited, one-time bank of lifetime reserve days at $868 per day. Skilled nursing facility care carries no daily coinsurance before day 21, then costs $217.00 per day from day 21 through day 100.

The critical detail is the benefit period. It is not a calendar year. It starts when you are admitted as an inpatient and ends once you have been out of hospital and skilled nursing care for a set stretch of time. If you are readmitted after that gap, a new benefit period begins — and you pay the $1,736 deductible again. Two separate hospitalizations in one year can therefore mean two full deductibles.

Part B — medical insurance

Part B covers physician services, outpatient care, durable medical equipment, diagnostic tests and most preventive services. This is the part with the monthly premium almost everyone pays: $202.90 as standard in 2026, on top of a $283 annual deductible.

Once the deductible is met, Part B generally leaves you responsible for a percentage of the Medicare-approved amount for most services, with no annual cap on what that can total. That absence of an out-of-pocket maximum in Original Medicare is why supplemental coverage — a Medigap policy, retiree coverage, or Medicare Advantage instead — is a serious decision rather than an optional extra.

Parts C and D

Part C (Medicare Advantage) and Part D (prescription drug coverage) are delivered by private insurers under contract. Their premiums, deductibles, networks and formularies are set plan by plan and vary by county, so there is no national figure to quote. Enrolling in a Medicare Advantage plan does not remove the Part B premium — in nearly all cases you continue paying $202.90, or your income-adjusted amount, to Medicare, and any plan premium sits on top.

How the 2.8% COLA interacts with the premium increase

The Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for 2026 is 2.8%, payable from January 2026 to nearly 71 million beneficiaries, according to the Social Security Administration (opens in a new tab).

For most beneficiaries, the Part B premium is withheld directly from the monthly Social Security payment, so the two changes arrive simultaneously and partly cancel out. Your gross benefit rises by 2.8%; your premium rises by $17.90. The net change in what lands in your account is the difference between those two numbers.

That difference is worth calculating rather than assuming, because a 2.8% raise on a larger benefit produces more dollars than the same percentage on a smaller one, while the $17.90 increase is flat and identical for everyone paying the standard premium. The increase therefore absorbs a much larger share of the COLA for beneficiaries with smaller payments. Some households will see a meaningful net rise; others will find most of the adjustment consumed by the premium.

There is also a long-standing statutory protection, generally called the hold harmless provision, which limits how much a Part B increase can reduce a person's Social Security payment in dollar terms year over year. It does not apply to everyone — notably not to people new to Medicare, those paying an income-related adjustment, or those whose premium is not withheld from a Social Security payment.

The same SSA release notes that the Social Security taxable maximum for 2026 is $184,500, which matters if you are still working while drawing benefits. If you are coordinating benefit timing against withdrawals from tax-advantaged accounts, our note on the 2026 401(k) and IRA contribution limits covers the other side of that calculation.

Who pays more than the standard premium

Not everyone pays $202.90. Beneficiaries above certain income thresholds pay an income-related monthly adjustment amount on top of the standard Part B premium, and a separate adjustment on Part D coverage. Several features of this surcharge surprise people:

• It is determined from income reported on a prior-year federal tax return that SSA receives from the IRS. The income setting your premium is therefore not your current income — it is income from an earlier year, when your circumstances may have been quite different.
• It applies in tiers, not as a smooth gradient. Crossing a threshold by a small amount moves you into the next tier in full, which makes income near a boundary consequential in a way most tax rules are not.
• It applies to Part D as well as Part B, as a separate amount added to whatever your drug plan charges.
• A one-off event — selling a property, realising a large capital gain, converting a traditional retirement account to a Roth — can lift your premium for a year even though the income was not recurring.
• If your income has since dropped because of a life-changing event such as retirement, the death of a spouse, divorce or the loss of a pension, you can ask SSA to reconsider using more recent figures.

We are not reproducing the income thresholds or surcharge amounts here, because they are adjusted annually and a stale bracket table is worse than none at all. Check current figures directly with CMS (opens in a new tab) or the Social Security Administration (opens in a new tab), or on the determination notice SSA sends you.

Part A: free for most, a real bill for some

Most people reach Medicare eligibility age having earned enough quarters of Medicare-covered employment — through their own work or a spouse's — that Part A costs them nothing monthly. For those who did not, Part A is available by paying a premium, and the amount depends on how much coverage was earned:

• 30 or more quarters of coverage: $311 per month in 2026, an increase of $26 from 2025.
• Fewer than 30 quarters: the full premium of $565 per month, an increase of $47 from 2025.

At $565 a month, Part A buy-in is a substantial ongoing cost, and it most often affects people who spent much of their career outside the US payroll tax system or in employment not covered by Medicare taxes. Confirm your quarters of coverage with SSA well before you become eligible rather than discovering the gap at enrollment.

Enrollment timing, and why late enrollment is expensive

Medicare enrollment is time-bound, and the penalty for missing a window is not a one-off charge — it is a permanent addition to your premium. The Part B late enrollment penalty is a surcharge scaled to how long you went without Part B after becoming eligible, and it generally continues for as long as you have Part B. It does not expire once you have "paid it off." Over a long retirement, a penalty that looks modest monthly compounds into a meaningful sum.

The main circumstances that let you delay Part B without penalty involve current, active employer group health coverage based on your own or a spouse's ongoing employment. Retiree coverage, COBRA and marketplace plans generally do not count, and treating them as if they do is one of the more expensive mistakes in the program. Confirm your situation with SSA or your benefits administrator before delaying.

Common mistakes

Budgeting only for the premium. The $202.90 monthly premium is the visible cost. The $283 deductible, Part A cost-sharing, Part D costs and the absence of an out-of-pocket cap in Original Medicare are where the larger, less predictable numbers live.

Ignoring the income look-back before a large transaction. Because the income-related adjustment is set from an earlier tax year, a Roth conversion or property sale can raise premiums a year or more later — a lag easily missed when the transaction is planned for tax reasons alone.

Auto-renewing a Part C or Part D plan without checking it. Formularies, networks and cost-sharing change annually, and a zero-premium Medicare Advantage plan is not a zero-cost one: the Part B premium continues in nearly all cases, and the plan's own deductibles and copays apply.

Sources

• CMS — 2026 Medicare Parts A & B Premiums and Deductibles (14 November 2025) (opens in a new tab)
• Social Security Administration — 2026 Cost-of-Living Adjustment fact sheet (opens in a new tab)
• Social Security Administration — press release, 24 October 2025 (opens in a new tab)

This article is general information for a United States audience. It is not financial, tax, legal or insurance advice, and it does not account for your individual circumstances. Medicare amounts, income thresholds and enrollment rules change, and plan costs vary by plan and location. Verify current figures with CMS, the Social Security Administration or a qualified professional before acting. Last reviewed 28 August 2026.