Medicare’s Part B premium could reach $360.60 a month by 2035, according to projections in the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report. That figure is a projection, not an announced or final premium, and it describes a path the trustees expect the standard monthly premium to follow over the next nine years if current trends continue. The same report projects the premium reaching $224.50 a month by 2028, up from $202.90 in 2026.
The trustees’ year-by-year projections through 2035
The 2026 Medicare Trustees Report, issued June 9 and summarized by the Military Officers Association of America, lays out the standard Part B premium at $202.90 in 2026 and a projected $209.50 in 2027, a 3.25 percent increase the trustees describe as the smallest percentage change since 2023. From there, the projections climb to $224.50 in 2028, $238.50 in 2029, $255.50 in 2030, $272.10 in 2031, $290.20 in 2032, $313.65 in 2033, $338.50 in 2034 and $360.60 in 2035. Laid end to end, that is nine consecutive years of projected increases without a single projected decline.
Inside the kit: the prior-authorization appeal steps and a medication and cost tracker are built for tracking exactly this kind of year-over-year premium change alongside a rising prescription bill. Open The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit to see both tools.
Why the trustees expect premiums to rise faster after 2027
The trustees project premiums will rise faster after 2027, “more than double the 2027 increase, on average, for the next eight years,” according to the Military Officers Association of America’s summary of the report. That pace means the 3.25 percent increase projected for 2027 is, by the trustees’ own comparison, the gentlest single-year change anywhere in the nine-year projection window through 2035, with the years after 2027 accounting for most of the total climb toward $360.60.
How the Part B premium is actually set each year
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announces the official Part B premium for the coming year every November, using a formula built around projected Part B program spending, structured so the standard premium covers roughly a quarter of projected per-person costs for most beneficiaries. A federal hold-harmless provision generally keeps a Part B increase from cutting into most beneficiaries’ Social Security payments in dollar terms, though higher earners subject to income-related surcharges and people newly enrolling are not covered by that protection. The trustees’ report projects years in advance where the underlying formula is likely to land, but only the November announcement for a given year sets the number a beneficiary actually pays that year, and the 2027 premium will not become official until this November.
A wider financial picture behind the premium numbers
The same 2026 Trustees Report that produced the Part B projections also found Medicare’s Hospital Insurance trust fund, which pays for Part A, is projected to become insolvent in 2033, according to a summary of the report published by KFF. Part B does not draw on that same trust fund and cannot become insolvent in the same way, since its financing combines general federal revenue with the beneficiary premiums projected here, but both figures come from the same underlying report on Medicare’s finances, released the same week in June.
The two projections are linked by the same underlying driver: rising per-beneficiary health care spending. As Medicare’s overall costs climb, both the Part A trust fund’s balance and the Part B premium formula move in response, just through different financing mechanisms, which is why a single annual report can produce a solvency warning for one part of Medicare and a premium projection for another in the same document.
How a nine-year premium climb compounds on a fixed income
Part B premiums are typically deducted directly from a Social Security payment before it reaches a beneficiary’s bank account, so a premium that grows from $202.90 in 2026 to a projected $360.60 in 2035 would nearly double the monthly amount withheld. Because Social Security’s own annual cost-of-living adjustment does not automatically move in lockstep with Part B premium growth every year, a retiree on a fixed income can see a shrinking net benefit even in a year when the gross Social Security payment itself has just gone up. A retiree who enrolls in Part B for the first time partway through this nine-year window will feel the later, steeper years of the projection rather than the smaller 2027 increase.
A projection, not a promise
The 2026 Trustees Report’s projections rely on assumptions about health care spending, enrollment and the broader economy that shift from one year’s report to the next, and the trustees revise their nine-year outlook annually as new data comes in. The $360.60 figure for 2035 is the trustees’ current best estimate under this year’s assumptions, not a locked-in premium, and the full report, published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is revised each year as the trustees update their outlook with newer data. Next year’s report, due out in mid-2027, will show whether the actual 2027 premium and the early years of this projection held up against what the trustees expected.
A nine-year premium climb with no single notice that adds it up
The Part B premium’s projected path toward 2035 unfolds year by year, and the trustees report that projects it does not also explain the programs, like Extra Help, that can lower what a beneficiary actually pays out of pocket. That gap between a rising premium and the relief programs sitting in separate notices is the unfinished task a Medicare beneficiary faces every year.
The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit names the prior-authorization appeal steps and includes a medication and cost tracker, tools built for following a premium and a prescription bill that both move every year.
Read about the appeal steps and the cost tracker in The Medicare Cost & Coverage Protection Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor; the projection is linked to its source.
