The Washington Post is reporting on the new plans that the US House of Representatives have for Medicare and how it will affect the wealthy.
To quote the article “The House GOP plan would increase the high-income premium by 15 percent in 2017 and lower the thresholds at which the higher fees kick in.
Most significantly, it freezes those income thresholds indefinitely, until one-fourth of Medicare recipients are paying “high-income” premiums. It’s unclear how long that would take, but currently only about 2 million out of 47 million Medicare beneficiaries pay higher premiums. Eventually that number could easily surpass 10 million.”
That is right, they want to increase healthcare costs through premiums and sell it as a fee on the “wealthy”.
In order to realize what this means one would have to know how “wealthy” is defined in the eyes of Medicare;
- Anyone who earns over a certain amount of income each year (for the brackets & guidelines see here)
- Income can be from any source that is earned in the year that makes it to a tax return, and we mean ANYTHING.
This move will insure that about 25% of all Medicare beneficiaries will see an increase in premiums for Parts B & D.
It’s already expected that the average couple who is aged 55 today, is healthy, under the Medicare minimum and has a life expectancy to age 90 can expect to be paying about $35,000 in premiums for healthcare at age 80.
If they hit the next tier (to see the tiers click here) they will pay $42,000 at age 80 and at the highest tier they can expect the bill to be $75,500 for the exact same coverage.
So go ahead and let your financial planner just ball park this expense, it should work alright especially if “hope” is one of your strategies even though there are plenty of strategies that can help off set this.
For the complete article from the Washington Post please click here