Page 12 of the Medicare & You 2027 handbook carries a sentence that a reader hunting for next year’s costs will not want to find: “The 2027 premium amounts, drug costs, and income limits weren’t available at the time of printing.” The handbook goes to Medicare households each fall, and Open Enrollment opens on October 15. The dollar figures printed inside it for Part A and Part B are all 2026 figures.
What the handbook says about its own missing numbers
The full passage, from the Medicare & You 2027 handbook (CMS product number 10050), reads: “The 2027 premium amounts, drug costs, and income limits weren’t available at the time of printing. Visit Medicare.gov to get the most up-to-date information available.” Nowhere else in the booklet does a 2027 dollar amount appear. The PDF text read for this piece shows only 2026 amounts attached to the benefits it describes.
Medicare’s own handbook page says the book “is mailed to all Medicare households each fall” and points to late September for arrival. The handbook itself directs readers to Medicare.gov repeatedly, on pages 2, 14, 16, 20, 24, 25 and 26 among others, for figures it could not print.
The 2026 figures printed in a 2027 book
What the handbook does print is the current year. It gives the standard Part B premium as $202.90 a month for 2026 and the Part B deductible as $283. The Part A inpatient hospital deductible appears as $1,736, with a copayment of $434 a day for hospital days 61 through 90. Part A premiums, for the people who must buy that coverage, are listed as $311 or $565 a month.
The income limits that trigger the income-related monthly adjustment amount, or IRMAA, are likewise from the current cycle. The handbook states that for 2026, a person whose modified adjusted gross income for 2024 was above $109,000, or $218,000 for a married couple filing jointly, may pay an IRMAA. That wording shows the lookback built into the surcharge: the 2026 premium is set by a tax return from two years earlier. The 2027 version of that threshold is among the income limits the handbook says were not available.
What Medicare.gov already shows for 2027 prescription coverage
The gap is not uniform. Medicare.gov’s page on costs for Medicare drug coverage does carry 2027 Part D parameters. Out-of-pocket spending on covered drugs is capped at $2,100 in 2026 and, in the page’s wording, “$2,400 in 2027.” The page also says no Medicare drug plan may have a deductible of more than $615 in 2026 and more than $700 in 2027. The national base beneficiary premium is shown as $38.99 for 2026, and the Part D late enrollment penalty is calculated as 1 percent of that base premium multiplied by the number of full, uncovered months.
So the handbook’s blanket line about drug costs sits beside a website that has already posted the cap and the deductible ceiling for the coming year. The two statements describe different things. The handbook is a printed snapshot, fixed when the presses ran, and the website is the live record the handbook sends readers to.
Where the 2027 Part A, Part B and savings-program figures stand
The live pages still carry last cycle’s numbers for the other items. Medicare.gov’s Medicare costs page, read again for this piece, labels everything “What you pay in 2026,” with the Part B premium at $202.90 a month and the deductible at $283, and it shows no 2027 Part A or Part B premium or deductible. The page for the Medicare Savings Programs, which help pay premiums for people with limited income, lists 2026 limits and no 2027 limits. The Social Security Administration’s Medicare premiums page shows the 2026 IRMAA brackets only.
Another place a 2027 premium might have surfaced is the CMS announcement of September 28 that Medicare Advantage and prescription drug programs are expected to remain stable in 2027. It gives the Open Enrollment dates, October 15 through December 7, and it does not state a 2027 Part B premium.
Open Enrollment runs on the same October 15 date either way
The dates are in the handbook, on page 13: Open Enrollment runs October 15 to December 7, 2026, and the Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment Period runs January 1 to March 31, 2027. The calendar therefore does not wait for the missing figures. A beneficiary weighing coverage in the fall does so with a Part B premium and Part A deductible that Medicare’s own pages still show only for 2026.
Part B and Part D are separate pieces of the same coverage decision, and the sources read for this piece publish them on different timetables. The Part D cap and deductible ceiling for 2027 are public. The Part B premium, the Part B deductible, the Part A deductible, the IRMAA income limits and the savings-program limits are not on any Medicare or SSA page read for this piece.
The wording CMS chose for a handbook that is already in mailboxes
The sentence on page 12 gives no date for when the 2027 premium amounts will be available. What it offers is a pointer to Medicare.gov, in a booklet printed under CMS product number 10050 that says the 2027 premium amounts, drug costs and income limits “weren’t available at the time of printing.”
Costs the handbook could not print, and a place to record the ones that can be
The notice on page 12 of Medicare & You 2027 leaves the 2027 premium amounts, drug costs and income limits to Medicare.gov, and Open Enrollment still opens on October 15. The unfinished job for a beneficiary is lining up each prescription and its cost on one sheet, so the figures can be compared as they are published.
The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit is a 10-page kit with a medication and cost tracker, the new Part D out-of-pocket cap and the prior-authorization appeal steps.
Start a medication and cost tracker before the 2027 figures arrive →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the quotations and figures were checked against the Medicare & You 2027 PDF and Medicare.gov, SSA and CMS pages.
