Community Chat

[SharkE]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Medicare has announced the "Part B" premium for 2017, and for most beneficiaries it's a modest increase.

Next year's tiny Social Security cost-of-living increase means that about 70 percent of Medicare recipients will be protected from rising medical costs. For this group, the average premium will be about $109 a month.

That's about 4 percent more than the $104.90 they paid this year.

Medicare's Part B covers outpatient services such as office visits.

For the remaining beneficiaries, the average 2017 premium will be $134, or 10 percent higher.

On top of the basic premium, individual retirees making more than $85,000 and married couples with incomes above $170,000 pay an extra surcharge. Those range to nearly $300 at the highest income levels.

The Part B deductible will be $183.

[Lila Belle]

Brace yourselves. It's only going to cost more for everything. What do you have to lose? EVERYTHING.

[3suwm5]

I heard tonight  about 106M are receiving help from social programs of some sort and about 114M are working.  That's a big problem,where does the $$ come from?

[Snowpuppy]

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@3suwm5 wrote:

I heard tonight  about 106M are receiving help from social programs of some sort and about 114M are working.  That's a big problem,where does the $$ come from?

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65 million people receive either SS, SSI or SSD. That's more than 1 in 5 or 20% of the entire population of the US. That figure comes from the COLA announcement press release.

SSI comes out of the general fund, not SS trust fund.

We have $19T in debt so "debt" is what funds most of SSI.

SSD goes broke every seven years or so as was projected for 2016. SSD then requests to borrow money from the retirement fund to finance SSD for a while longer. 

[maestra]

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@Lila Belle wrote:
Brace yourselves. It's only going to cost more for everything. What do you have to lose? EVERYTHING.

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There are many of us that havent lost EVERYTHING!

We have hope for the future . I say this as a breast cancer survivor of 1 year now.

[Winifred]

Interesting in that SS has been around for quite a while and I certainly ALWAYS paid into it. In 1999 the premium one paid for their Medicare was only $56 a month after all those years - like I said it had been here for many years then. It then jumped from that to what it is now -  just ridiculous. But then Bush messed SS up quite a bit and these increases began with his presidency. Already knew this increase was coming - it was announced some years back.

[SharkE]

I get on it in Dec. and was told my premium would be 120 something.

Guess it's already been raised before Dec. 1st. I'm confused. 

My Humana went to 650 a month, so, guess I'm still ahead, but, my little SS check seems to be shrinking.

[mstyrion 1]

SS and Medicare are not the same thing.  What you are talking about is an increase in Medicare premiums, not an increase in SS payments, right?

Maybe a modification of your thread title would be less misleading, OP.

[SharkE]

They take your Medicare Part B premium out of your SS benefit.

[mstyrion 1]

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@SharkE wrote:

They take your Medicare Part B premium out of your SS benefit.

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Yes.

So your title should be SS payment is going down.