Big change coming soon for high income Medicare beneficiaries
Buried in the new “Doc Fix” law are provisions that will adversely affect some folks on Medicare May 13, 2015 @ 3:42 pm - By Katy Votava http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20150513/FREE/150519958/big-change-coming-soon-for-high-income-medicare-beneficiaries Physicians Credentialing Doctors for Medicare Higher-income Medicare beneficiaries have been paying more for their Medicare Parts B and D coverage for several years in the form of income-related monthly adjustment amounts. As a result of a new bill that sailed through Congress with bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Barack Obama in mid-April, costs for upper-income Medicare beneficiaries will increase soon. The legislation is officially called the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, otherwise known as the “Doc Fix” law. The major focus of this law is to permanently repair the long-broken method of paying doctors under Medicare, secure permanent funding for low-income Medicare recipients and ensure that children will be able to get access to health coverage. Buried in the law are other provisions that will adversely affect some folks on Medicare. One of those provisions is that the scale for setting the Medicare B and D IRMAAs will change dramatically in the near future, resulting in more high-income individuals paying sizable IRMAA amounts. This recent law changes that scale in the near future resulting in more beneficiaries paying the top IRMAA levels sooner than is currently the case. Keep in mind that the modified adjusted gross income determination by the Social Security Administration in any year is drawn from the tax return two years prior. Case in point, while the law stipulates that new MAGI tier definitions go into effect 2018, the 2016 tax return will be used to set those 2018 IRMAA payments. There have been dramatic changes [...]