Medicare Premiums Set to Increase 10% in 2026

Last Friday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the 2026 Medicare Parts A and B Premiums and Deductibles and the 2026 Medicare Part D Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amounts. This included an announcement that traditional Medicare premiums would rise 10% year-over-year.

The Medicare Part B premium, which covers physicians’ services, outpatient care, some home health services, durable medical equipment and services not covered by Part A, will be $202.90 for 2026, up $17.90 from $185 in 2025. The CMS Fact Sheet explains that the increase is due to projected price changes and assumed utilization increases “consistent with historical experience.”

The increase is higher than both the rate of inflation and the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) recently announced by the Social Security Administration, Live Now FOX explains. Consumer prices increased in September by 3% compared to the year prior, and the COLA increase is set for 2.8%. AARP estimates that this will add an extra $56 per month to social security.

CMS also said that the increase could have been much higher were it not for action taken by the Trump administration to address “unprecedented” spending on skin substitutes, which the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General determined were “particularly vulnerable to questionable billing and fraud schemes.” The Hill reports that CMS took measures in July to curb excessive spending on skin substitutes for wound care after uncovering data suggesting that Medicare Part B spending on the biologic or synthetic products had increased from $256 million in 2019 to $10 billion in 2024. From the CMS release:

If the Trump Administration had not taken action to address unprecedented spending on skin substitutes, the Part B premium increase would have been about $11 more per month.