7 Medicare Changes for 2027 You Should Know

Next year’s Part A premium and deductibles will also be announced in November.

Medicare Part A covers inpatient hospital care, short-term nursing home stays, hospice care and home health care following a hospital stay. Most people 65 and older pay no premiums for Part A because either they’ve worked 40 quarters and paid Medicare taxes or they qualify through their spouse.

But if you aren’t eligible for zero-premium Part A, you can buy the coverage — which will include a monthly premium — just like you buy a private insurance policy. To do so, you’ll also have to sign up for Part B.

If you’ve worked and paid Medicare taxes for 30 to 39 quarters, your $311-a-month Part A premium in 2026 is projected to increase to $330 in 2027, the trustees expect. Others eligible for Medicare but who have worked fewer quarters pay $565 per month for Part A in 2026. That’s projected to increase to $600 in 2027.

The trustees expect the Part A inpatient hospital deductible will increase from $1,736 to $1,788 next year, while the inpatient daily coinsurance for days 61 to 90 is projected to go from $434 this year to $447 next year.

4. Part D premium stabilization program ends in 2027

A temporary program that lowered premiums for Part D stand-alone drug plans used by beneficiaries in original Medicare is discontinued for 2027.

The Medicare premium stabilization program paid a combined total of $9.8 billion to the plans in 2025 and 2026 to help them transition to consumer-friendly provisions of a 2022 prescription drug law that revamped the Part D benefit. While the law cut drug costs for Part D enrollees, it increased costs for insurers that were expected to raise premiums in response.

Without the subsidy program, premiums would have “nearly doubled” in 2025 for those who stayed in their 2024 stand-alone drug plan, the Government Accountability Office found earlier this year. Monthly premiums for 37 percent of these beneficiaries would have increased by more than $40, GAO found.

But after two years, the Trump administration canceled the subsidy program for 2027 — its planned final year. Dr. Mehmet Oz, CMS administrator, called the program an insurance industry bailout and said plans already had sufficient time to adjust to the 2022 drug law.

The canceled subsidies “did not result in substantially higher across-the-board” premiums for stand-alone plans in 2027 “but still likely affected premium levels,” says KFF, a nonprofit health care research organization.

5. Premiums rise, availability falls for Part D stand-alone plans

Part D stand-alone prescription drug plans used by beneficiaries in original Medicare will be harder to find and more expensive for many next year.

The total number of stand-alone drug plans fell from 360 in 2026 to 316 in 2027, KFF says. And the number of stand-alone plans available to the average beneficiary will decline for the fourth straight year from 11 in 2026 to nine in 2027.

In addition, there’ll be no zero-premium stand-alone plans available next year to the nearly 21 million current plan enrollees — 83 percent — who don’t receive financial assistance with their drug costs through the federal Extra Help program, according to Avalere Health, a health care consulting firm. 

That means 4 million of these beneficiaries now enrolled in zero-premium plans in 2026 will have to pay a monthly premium for the coverage in 2027, according to KFF.

And average monthly premiums for stand-alone coverage will rise 50 percent from $38.72 this year to $58.20 in 2027 for the nearly 21 million current plan enrollees who get no financial assistance, says Avalere.

A similar study by KFF estimates average monthly premiums for stand-alone plans will rise 50 percent next year to $51 from $34 in 2026, assuming current enrollees keep their same plan for 2027.

The loss of access to the zero-premium plans for enrollees without low-income subsidies is “possibly related” to the cancellation in 2027 of temporary subsidies paid to stand-alone plans in 2025 and 2026, KFF notes. The canceled subsidies could also be related to monthly premium hikes of $50 or more next year for some stand-alone plan enrollees who remain in their current plan, per KFF. 

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