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How much does Medicare cost per month?

Medicare is not free. Here is every piece that has a price tag, which ones you can control, and where the current year figures come from.

Updated August 17, 2026 · 3 min read

There is no single Medicare premium. What you pay is the sum of several separate charges, and only some of them are the same for everybody. Here is the whole list, so nothing surprises you in January.

Part A: usually zero

If you or your spouse paid Medicare taxes for roughly 10 years of work, Part A has no monthly premium. That covers the large majority of people.

If you did not reach that work history, Part A can be bought, and it is expensive. This comes up most often for people who spent their careers outside the United States or in employment that did not pay into Medicare.

Part A still has a deductible each time you are admitted to the hospital, and that is a per benefit period charge, not annual. You can trigger it more than once in a year.

Part B: the one nearly everyone pays

Part B has a standard monthly premium set by the federal government, and it changes every January. For most people it is deducted from the Social Security check before it arrives, so you never write a check for it.

If you have a higher income, you pay the standard premium plus a surcharge called IRMAA. It is based on your tax return from two years earlier, which catches people off guard the year after they sell a house or take a large distribution.

Part B also has its own annual deductible, and after that you generally pay 20 percent of the cost of covered services with no upper limit.

Part D: prescriptions

Standalone drug plans have their own monthly premium, and it varies a lot by plan. On top of the premium you have a deductible and then copays that depend on which tier your medication falls into.

High earners pay an IRMAA surcharge on Part D too, not just Part B. That one is easy to miss.

There is now an annual cap on what you pay out of pocket for covered drugs, which replaced the old coverage gap most people knew as the donut hole. For anyone on expensive medication this changed the math completely.

Then the gap coverage you choose

This is where the paths split, and where you actually have control.

• A Medicare Supplement adds a monthly premium, and in exchange most or all of that 20 percent goes away. Premiums vary widely by plan letter, age, gender, tobacco use and carrier.
• A Medicare Advantage plan often adds nothing to your monthly cost. Many in this area are zero dollar premium. You pay copays as you use care instead, up to an annual out of pocket maximum.

A zero dollar premium does not mean free coverage. It means your costs arrive as copays when you need care rather than as a bill every month. Which one is cheaper for you depends entirely on how much care you actually use.

Help paying for it

Two programs matter here, and both are underused in South Texas.

• Extra Help, also called the Low Income Subsidy, cuts what you pay for Part D drug coverage substantially.
• Medicare Savings Programs can pay your Part B premium outright, which puts that money back in your Social Security check.

Both have income and asset limits that change annually. It costs nothing to find out whether you qualify, and a lot of people who would qualify never apply.

Where to get the exact current numbers

The Part B premium, both deductibles, the IRMAA brackets and the drug cap are all reset every January. Rather than quote figures here that go stale, check Medicare.gov for the current year, or call us and we will read you the current numbers for your situation.