Social Security COLA and Medicare Premium Increase

[MickinMD ★]

For 2022, the Social Security COLA for typical retiree beneficiaries has been announced at 5.9% and the avg. retiree recipient will get about $90 more per month minus a $10 increase Medicare says it expects for its premium for 2022, which is a 6.7% increase.  Some Medicare Advantage Plans' premiums are expected drop in price.  My pension's BCBS Medicare Supplemental Plan is going up only 1.4% so apparently Medicare is shifting a higher percentage of costs onto recipients.

Because of the way games are played calculating how much medical increases contribute to inflation, some years the Medicare Premium goes up MORE than the total COLA! Fortunately that's not the case now.

For those of us getting pensions, check your COLA max. - the percent it won't exceed even if inflation is high.  For my teacher's pension, it's not supposed to exceed 3%, though the state legislature has passed laws that allow for more when inflation is significantly higher.  During the huge inflation periods from the 1970's through early 80's, a lot of pension recipients lost half or more of the buying power of their pensions due to COLA max's.

The likely amount I'll clear in 2022 from pension plus Soc.Sec. will be about 4.25% more than 2021, so the buying power of that money will probably drop by around 2% if 2022's inflation remains high as Bank of America and others say they're expecting.  Meanwhile, my credit union savings and checking accounts get 0.1% interest and 5-year CD's get 0.65% and those beat the local banks!

[Kzoo]

My Medicare Advantage plan is equal to my Medicare payment.  Exactly identical because that's what it is.  I pay my quarterly Medicare payment and they forward it to my Medicare Advantage provider.  I'm not sure how that works exactly but that's between them.  AND I just got my Advantage Plan benefits document for 2022 and some of the out of pocket stuff wend down and many of the benefit coverages went up.  I'm not at all used to that.

 

[ChrisL]

My father in law was talking about that during the last call. He’s so funny, he knows we are 10 + years from retirement but felt the need to tell us about the SS COLA. 

It is odd that one parent has a gimme gimme attitude. What can I get from you.  The other gives & gives (he drops several hundred dollars into our account every quarter & has done this for years) and is concerned about our finances. Always asking if we need anything. 

Quite the contrasts and speaks volumes to why they split…