If you have Medicare, you will likely see many changes to your Medicare Part D drug costs in 2025. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 should lower your drug costs. Here’s what the Kaiser Family Foundation says to expect.
Your Medicare Part D premiums probably will increase in 2025. That’s because your total annual out-of-pocket drug costs will be capped at $2,000, far lower than this year. To avoid higher costs and lower profits, Medicare Part D insurers will spread the cost of this cap across everyone who enrolls.
The Inflation Reduction Act anticipated a Part D premium increase. It includes a provision that does not allow the Part D “base premium” to rise more than six percent from the prior year. What does that mean exactly? Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as a limit on your individual premium increase.
A new voluntary demonstration, through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, might also help some people in Traditional Medicare who buy stand-alone drug coverage avoid big premium increases. It lowers the base premium by $15 a month and limits the premium increase from 2024 to 2025 to $35 a month.
The base premium for Part D will be $36.78 in 2025. That does help reflect what the Part D premiums will be. We will know that in September.
Here’s what we know now: The standard Part D benefit is changing in significant ways. Enrollees getting the standard benefit will meet their deductible and then pay 25 percent of the cost of their drugs until they reach the $2,000 maximum out-of-pocket cap.
N.B. This year, if you are willing to give up Traditional Medicare, with access to the physicians and hospitals of your choice anywhere in the US, and subject yourself to huge administrative hurdles when you need complex and costly care, in a Medicare Advantage plan, your Part D premiums are, on average, significantly lower than the Part D premiums for stand-alone plans available to people in Traditional Medicare, $9 v. $43 a month.
Leave a Reply to Merri Morgan Cancel reply