The 2026 Part A hospital deductible is $1,736 per benefit period, not per year, and Medicare caps neither the number of benefit periods nor the day-61 charge of $434.

Most contract fights between an insurer and a hospital system end with an announcement that everything is fine. This one ended with an announcement that most of it is fine. UnitedHealthcare and the University of Miami Health System renewed their relationship for commercial, individual and Medicaid coverage — and separately confirmed that one Medicare Advantage…

Between now and the end of September, a document arrives that decides more household money than almost anything else in the Medicare year, and it looks like junk mail. It is the Annual Notice of Change, and it is the first place a member learns what their own plan will cost and cover in 2027…

An extension is not an agreement, and the difference is about to matter for a large number of Medicare Advantage members in New York. NewYork-Presbyterian and UnitedHealthcare bought themselves another month at the end of July while talks continued. That month expires at the end of August, and the hospital system has published exactly what…

Medigap policies are normally sold with health questions attached. Outside a few protected windows, an insurer can ask about a person’s medical history, charge more because of it, or decline to sell at all. That is why a Medicare Advantage member who develops a serious condition often finds the door back to Original Medicare with…

For the past several years, a Medicare beneficiary who signed a form at an informational seminar had two days of quiet before an agent could legally pitch them a plan. That gap was built into federal regulation on the theory that a decision worth thousands of dollars a year should not be made in the…

Medicare’s Part D program has a number that almost nobody pays and everybody’s premium is built from. For 2027 it is $41.33, and the way CMS arrived at it says more about the state of drug coverage than the figure itself does. The agency did not choose that number. It is the highest number the…

For most of this year, Providence Health Plan’s Medicare Advantage members had reason to think they would be spared. When the Oregon nonprofit said in May that it was leaving most of the insurance business, it carved out its Medicare Advantage book and said it was negotiating to hand those members to a national carrier…

For anyone on expensive prescriptions, Medicare now has a firm ceiling on what a year of covered drugs can cost. The Part D out-of-pocket maximum rises to $2,100 in 2026, up from $2,000 in 2025. Reach it, and your plan pays 100 percent of your covered drugs for the rest of the year. It is…

A Medicare Advantage plan comes with a promise most people rarely test: a hard ceiling on what a bad health year can cost you. What fewer members realize is that the ceiling has two heights, and which one applies depends on whether your care stays inside the plan’s network. When a hospital drops out of…