Social Security & Medicare
Benefit changes, claiming strategies, eligibility rules, Medicare enrollment, Part D updates, and policy changes affecting retirees.
Latest in Social Security & Medicare
Medicare’s negotiated price for the cancer drug Pomalyst falls from $21,744 to $8,650 a month in 2027
Beginning January 1, 2027, Medicare’s second round of drug-price negotiations cuts the monthly list price of Pomalyst, a multiple myeloma treatment made by Bristol Myers...
Social Security payments due October 3 arrive Friday, October 2, for people who started benefits before May 1997
Social Security’s monthly payment for people who started receiving benefits before May 1997, along with anyone who also receives Supplemental Security Income, is due on...
Humana members losing their Medicare Advantage plan get a special window from December 8 to February 28 to pick new coverage
Humana confirmed on its second-quarter 2026 earnings call that Medicare Advantage exits set for 2027 will affect roughly 600,000 members, the second straight year the...
Social Security moves November’s SSI payment to Friday, October 30, because November 1 falls on a Sunday
Supplemental Security Income is due on the first of every month, but November 1, 2026 falls on a Sunday, so the Social Security Administration’s published...
Medicare says it pays about 16 percent more than private insurers for lab tests and has proposed matching those rates
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said September 21 that Medicare has been paying about 16 percent more for laboratory services than private insurers...
Janumet and Tradjenta take the deepest cuts in Medicare’s second negotiation round
Janumet and Janumet XR will drop from a $526 list price to a negotiated $80 for a 30-day supply on January 1, 2027, an 85...
Medicare’s 2026 drug surcharge for higher incomes runs from $14.50 to $91 a month on top of a plan premium
Medicare’s Part D income-related monthly adjustment for 2026 adds a second, separate bill on top of whatever a beneficiary’s drug plan already charges, and the...
Medicare charges $121.60 a month for immunosuppressive drug coverage after a kidney transplant
Medicare will charge $121.60 a month in 2026 for beneficiaries who keep only immunosuppressive drug coverage after losing standard Medicare eligibility following a kidney transplant....
A second home counts against Extra Help even though the house a person lives in does not
A Medicare beneficiary who owns only the home they live in can qualify for the Part D low-income subsidy with resources up to $16,590 in...
Medicare will not let a 2027 drug plan charge more than $20 for a generic or $47 for a preferred brand
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services regulators have finalized a hard ceiling on what a 2027 Medicare Part D drug plan may charge during the...
Medicare’s specialty drug tier threshold rises to $1,080 in 2027
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has set the Part D specialty-tier cost threshold at $1,080 a month for 2027, a 13.7 percent rise...
Social Security can pull a month’s wages straight from a payroll company, but only with written permission
Since April 2025, the Social Security Administration has used a Payroll Information Exchange to pull a beneficiary’s monthly wages directly from a payroll data provider,...
A bipartisan Social Security commission bill has sat in committee untouched since June 8
On June 8, 2026, Representative Tom Cole and Representative Thomas Suozzi introduced H.R. 9187, the Bipartisan Social Security Commission Act of 2026, sending it to...
Anyone born in 1960 reaches full retirement age in 2027, and claiming at 62 pays 70 percent
Every person born in 1960 turns 67 at some point in 2027, and under Social Security’s rules that birthday is the first moment anyone in...
Nothing about 2027 has reached Social Security’s own tables yet, and every published limit still shows 2026
Every 2027 figure Social Security actually publishes still doesn’t exist, and that gap runs across every dollar table the agency maintains. The substantial gainful activity...
Social Security’s 800 number now answers in about 36 seconds, down from eight minutes a year earlier
Social Security’s national phone line took on millions more calls this year and got faster anyway. The average speed of answer on the agency’s 800...
A Social Security office visit averages six minutes with an appointment, 26 without
A visitor to a Social Security field office this year waits about six minutes if a representative was already expecting them, and 26 minutes if...
Social Security’s retirement fund is projected to run short in late 2032, two years before the combined funds
The Social Security Administration’s 2026 Trustees Report projects the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays retirement and survivor benefits, will exhaust its reserves...
Social Security will let someone who cannot use a bank ask the Treasury for a waiver from the paper check cutoff
Social Security’s paper checks stopped being the default on September 30, 2025, the date federal law and Executive Order 14247 required nearly every federal benefit...
Social Security’s rewritten heart rules take effect October 30 and add listings for cardiomyopathy and aortic valve disease
The Social Security Administration has finished rewriting the medical rules examiners use to decide cardiovascular disability claims, and the new version takes effect October 30,...