Every fall the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services publish next year’s figures, every news outlet reports the premium, and almost nobody explains what any of it means for an actual month. So here are the 2026 numbers with a sentence each about what they do to you.
One caveat before we start. These are the standard amounts. Your own may differ, particularly if your income was high two years ago. And a demonstration website is not the place to settle your own figures: check them at Medicare.gov or ask us.
$202.90, the Part B premium
The monthly cost of the doctor half of Medicare, for most people. It is normally deducted from your Social Security payment before it reaches you, which is why plenty of people never really see it and are startled the first time they do.
Nearly everyone pays it. You pay it whether you are on Original Medicare, a supplement, or a Medicare Advantage plan. When an advert says “$0 premium”, it means the plan charges nothing on top of this, not that this has gone away.
$283, the Part B deductible
What you pay yourself each calendar year before Part B starts paying its share. It resets on January 1, which is why the first appointment of the year often costs more than the rest.
This is the exact amount that Plan G leaves you and Plan F used to cover. If you are weighing those two against each other, the whole difference in coverage is this one number, and if the Plan F premium is more than about $24 a month higher, you are paying more than the deductible to avoid paying the deductible.
20%, with no ceiling
Not a new number, and the most important one on the page. After the deductible, Original Medicare pays 80% of the approved amount for most Part B services and you pay the other 20%, with no annual maximum of any kind.
Twenty percent of a blood test is trivial. Twenty percent of a year of cancer treatment is not. This single gap is the reason almost everybody adds either a supplement or an Advantage plan, and it is worth saying out loud because employer plans all have an out-of-pocket maximum and people reasonably assume Medicare does too.
About $1,736, the Part A hospital deductible
What you owe when you are admitted to hospital. The catch is in the unit: it applies per benefit period, not per year. A benefit period ends once you have been out of hospital and out of skilled nursing for sixty days in a row.
So two separate admissions in one calendar year, more than sixty days apart, means paying it twice. People discover this in the second envelope.
$2,100, the drug spending cap
The best number on the page, and the newest. Once you have paid $2,100 of your own money for covered prescriptions in 2026, you pay nothing more for covered drugs for the rest of the calendar year. That is catastrophic coverage.
Before 2025 there was no fixed ceiling at all, and the old coverage gap, the doughnut hole, sat in the middle of the year waiting for people. Both are gone. If you are on a specialty medication, this changed your arithmetic more than anything else in a decade.
You can also ask your plan to spread what you owe across monthly bills instead of paying it at the counter. That is the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan. It does not lower the total; it stops a $900 January. You have to ask for it.
$35, the insulin cap
The most you pay per month for each covered insulin prescription, whether you are in Part D or a Medicare Advantage plan with drug coverage. No deductible applies to it.
About $109,000 and $218,000, the IRMAA thresholds
If your income was above roughly $109,000 as a single filer, or $218,000 filing jointly, Social Security adds a surcharge to your Part B and Part D premiums. It is called IRMAA, and for 2026 it is based on your 2024 tax return.
Two things worth knowing. It is a cliff, not a slope: crossing a threshold by one dollar moves you a whole step. And if your income has since dropped because you retired, sold a business, divorced or lost a spouse, you can ask Social Security to use your current income instead, on form SSA-44. That form is free and it is frequently worth several hundred dollars a month. Almost nobody is told about it.
10% and 1%, the penalties
The two numbers that follow you. Part B adds 10% to your premium for every full twelve months you could have had it and did not, for as long as you have Part B. Part D adds 1% of the national base premium for every month you went without creditable drug coverage, also for as long as you have Part D.
Both are avoidable and both have exceptions. If you had employer coverage, or you were given wrong information by a plan, say so before you accept a penalty as final.
The one to memorise
If you keep only one number from this page, keep 20% with no ceiling. Every other figure here is a fact about a bill. That one is the reason the whole rest of the system exists.
The full cost breakdown is here, and we will happily price your own year for you.