Wife’s Medicare bill we received is $845.00

[Microman]

First time we have had a bill for , what I understand is Medicare part B. We have been paying $12.40/no for part D (prescription)

How does this part B get figured?, this is a first and we are old

[Speedy]

Part B is what you get when you are 65 for non-hospital care. It costs $170.10/mo. (Part A, hospitalization, has no premiums.) However, if you have an employer provided healthcare plan that is equal or better than Part B, you can stick with that beyond age 65. If you buy privately then you have to move to Part B at age 65.

The math would indicate that you are getting a bill for five months. Pay it. If you transition from an employer plan but don’t do it within 63 days, thus being uninsured, you pay a penalty for the rest of your life and the penalty increases the longer the uninsured gap.

[PeterW]

Part B costs $170.10 per month. Call Soc Sec to see what the bill is actually for.

[Speedy]

What PeterW advised. If the bill was $850.50, then it would be the right amount to be the premium for five months. Social Security was backlogged so they are letting people backdate to Jan. 1, 2022 to enroll and pay Part B.

[Michael]

What the others said. It seems very likely she's gotten a bill for Jan-May, 2022.

Unless you made boodles of money in 2020. Then you're subject to IRMAA (Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount) for Medicare Parts B and D. I can't make the math work for the $845 with IRMAA, but if you and your wife made $750,000 in 2020, your IRMAA Part B would be $578.30 each per month. And you'd have a Part D IRMAA of $77.90 (plus your Part D cost). IRMAA starts at $182,000 of joint income. So, if your family income was less than $182,000 in 2020, it's not going to be IRMAA

[kap]

Michael wrote:
What the others said. It seems very likely she's gotten a bill for Jan-May, 2022.

Unless you made boodles of money in 2020. Then you're subject to IRMAA (Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount) for Medicare Parts B and D. I can't make the math work for the $845 with IRMAA, but if you and your wife made $750,000 in 2020, your IRMAA Part B would be $578.30 each per month. And you'd have a Part D IRMAA of $77.90 (plus your Part D cost). IRMAA starts at $182,000 of joint income. So, if your family income was less than $182,000 in 2020, it's not going to be IRMAA

What fresh hell! I am not looking forward to this type of retirement any time soon :-[

[Speedy]

kap wrote: What fresh hell! I am not looking forward to this type of retirement any time soon

Medicare is not a fresh hell. It may not match what you have now but for many people it is a lifesaver.

My wife retired at 68 (I’m 71) which is when we both got Part B. We stayed with her employer plan rather than take Medicare at 65 for one main reason - cost. We are paying $760/mo total for the both of us for Part B and the Medicare supplement+drug plan. But a secondary reason was the HSA offered by her employer dating back to the implementation of Obamacare. We set aside the maximum ever year which now totals about $30k. I wish her employer had offered an HSA earlier… When you have Medicare you cannot contribute to an HSA.

[Diana]

Speedy,

I have an HSA through work, and I’m not yet old enough for Medicare. When you say that when you have Medicare, do you mean when you get old enough (I’m 61 now) or when you apply for and get approved for Medicare? I’ve been actively trying to ignore the getting older part …

I’ve been maximizing it every year, just because.

Diana

[Speedy]

Diana wrote:
Speedy,

I have an HSA through work, and I’m not yet old enough for Medicare. When you say that when you have Medicare, do you mean when you get old enough (I’m 61 now) or when you apply for and get approved for Medicare? I’ve been actively trying to ignore the getting older part …

I’ve been maximizing it every year, just because.

Diana

SSA doesn’t allow a person to open or contribute to an existing HSA once you are enrolled in Medicare. Any funds in an existing HSA can continue to be spent while on Medicare as before until the HSA is depleted. If a person is 65 or older and not enrolled in Medicare they can open or contribute to an HSA.

[Michael]

Speedy wrote:
[quote=Diana]
Speedy,

I have an HSA through work, and I’m not yet old enough for Medicare. When you say that when you have Medicare, do you mean when you get old enough (I’m 61 now) or when you apply for and get approved for Medicare? I’ve been actively trying to ignore the getting older part …

I’ve been maximizing it every year, just because.

Diana

SSA doesn’t allow a person to open or contribute to an existing HSA once you are enrolled in Medicare. Any funds in an existing HSA can continue to be spent while on Medicare as before until the HSA is depleted. If a person is 65 or older and not enrolled in Medicare they can open or contribute to an HSA.
One other potentially confounding factor. If you are 65 or older, Medicare allows you to sign up for Part A even if you're using employer health insurance (and suggests that it's important for some people but not for others, depending on how your employer health insurance works). And it also will retroactively sign you up for the previous 6 months after you sign up (up to the age of 65--it won't sign you up earlier than that).

So, if you're older than 65.5 years old and are still using employer health insurance as you retire it means you can't fund an HSA for the 6 months before you retire. I almost got stuck with this. I retired at the end of May, 2019 at 66 years of age and started Medicare as of that June 1 after using my employer health insurance through my career. I had been putting the max in my HSA for years. Fortunately, my tax-attorney daughter mentioned something to me about it in the fall of 2018 and so I stopped my HSA contributions as of the end of the November, 2018. Otherwise I'd have been subject to penalties. I was rather irritated to find that Medicare retroactively signed me up for benefits for those previous 6 months when I didn't need them and that I had no choice in the matter. I had been planning on funding my total 2019 HSA before I retired but wasn't able to do so.

One other HSA-related issue that people need to know is that if your HSA is inherited by a non-spouse, the total is immediately taxable to the inheritors in the year that they inherit it. There's no stretch that allows them to take the funds over time as there is for IRA's. Spouses can inherit an HSA and use it as the original owner could use it, however. So, it's useful to your inheritors to spend down your HSA in your elderly years. An easy way to do it is by paying for/getting reimbursed for Medicare Part B/D and so on through your HSA. Also, remember you can get reimbursed for any medical expenses that occurred after your HSA was established if you have the appropriate receipts. So, you can save those receipts for years and then get reimbursed later in life after you HSA has grown significantly through investments.

https://www.medicare.gov/basics/get-star...ng-past-65

https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/iss...ge-65.html

https://www.irahelp.com/slottreport/why-...t-your-hsa