Free Medicare Tool
What will Medicare actually cost you in 2026?
Plug in your numbers and see your real Part B and Part D costs — including IRMAA, the income surcharge most people don't find out about until the bill arrives.
Your estimate
Two minutes. No account, no obligation — just the numbers.
Your estimated 2026 Medicare premiums
$0/mo
Where your income lands on the IRMAA scale
IRMAA is a cliff, not a slope — crossing a threshold by even $1 moves your whole premium up a tier. If your income dropped since 2024 due to retirement or another life event, you can request a recalculation with Social Security's Form SSA-44.
Want to see how this fits your actual Medicare decision?
Premiums are only part of the picture. I'll walk through what this means for your plan options — no pressure, just a real conversation.
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Original Medicare or Medicare Advantage — how the costs work
The premium above is just your Part B and Part D cost. What you pay beyond that depends on how you structure your coverage. Here's the general shape of each path — not a recommendation, just how the two are built.
Original Medicare + Medigap
- You pay Part B (and IRMAA, if it applies) plus a separate Part D drug plan premium.
- A Medigap policy covers most of the 20% coinsurance Original Medicare leaves you with — premiums vary by your age, state, and the plan letter you choose.
- Very few network restrictions — you can generally see any provider who accepts Medicare, nationwide.
- No annual out-of-pocket cap on Original Medicare itself, which is exactly what Medigap is designed to protect against.
Medicare Advantage
- You still pay Part B (and IRMAA, if it applies) — Medicare Advantage doesn't replace that.
- Plan premiums are often low or $0, with drug coverage frequently built in.
- Comes with a built-in annual out-of-pocket maximum on covered services.
- Coverage runs through a plan network — which providers and pharmacies you can use depends on the specific plan.
Neither path is universally better — it depends on your health needs, your doctors, your budget, and where you live. That's the actual conversation worth having once you know your baseline numbers.
What is IRMAA, really?
IRMAA stands for Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount. If your household income was above a certain level on your tax return from two years ago, Medicare charges you more for Part B and Part D — not because you did anything wrong, but because the program is funded on a sliding scale tied to income.
Two things trip people up: it's based on income from two years back, so a big one-time event (a home sale, a Roth conversion, a final working year) can raise your premium later even if your income has since dropped. And it's a cliff — one dollar over a threshold moves your entire premium to the next tier, not just the amount above the line. If a life event like retirement has genuinely lowered your income since then, Social Security's Form SSA-44 lets you request a recalculation.
Figures reflect the 2026 Medicare Part B and Part D premiums and IRMAA thresholds published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on November 14, 2025, effective January 1, 2026. This tool is for general education only — not insurance, tax, or financial advice — and doesn't reflect your specific plan costs. CMS updates these figures annually; check cms.gov for the current year's numbers.