High Country Advocate Staff Report
A Colorado senior on Social Security Disability Insurance got their January 2025 benefit statement: $1,940 per month. Medicare Part B: $135.
In May – mid-year, no warning – Medicare jumped to $185. Their check dropped to $1,865. A $75 monthly cut, overnight.
January 2026 brought the announced 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment. Medicare went up again, to $202.90. After two “raises,” this person’s monthly check is $1,905 – still $35 less than early 2025.
Social Security Administration never sent a letter explaining the change. The senior won’t call to fight it. Too much fear of federal bureaucracy.
This isn’t a glitch. It’s the system working exactly as designed.
The Math That Doesn’t Work
Your 2026 Social Security statement shows a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment. For the average retiree, that’s $56 more per month.
Medicare Part B increased to $202.90 – up $17.90 from last year. If premiums come out of your Social Security check, that’s gone before you see it.
What’s left: $38.10 per month. About $1.27 per day.
That has to cover your property tax increase. Your homeowner’s insurance spike. Groceries. Prescriptions. Gas.
The three-year pattern:
- 2024: Social Security up 3.2%, Medicare up 5.9%
- 2025: Social Security up 2.5%, Medicare up 5.9%
- 2026: Social Security up 2.8%, Medicare up 9.7%
Three years running, Medicare increases have been double or triple your COLA. The gap is widening.
The Mountain Country Math
You live in Fairplay. Your doctor is in Denver – 100 miles each way.
In winter, that’s Highway 285 over Kenosha Pass when the weather’s bad. In summer, it’s bumper-to-bumper RVs and trailers, a two-hour crawl each way. Sometimes you stay overnight because you can’t make the return trip same-day.
Gas. Vehicle maintenance. Motel if needed. Food on the road. Your Medicare premium went up $17.90 per month. That barely covers one trip’s gas, much less the total cost of accessing healthcare.
If you worked as a rancher, ran a small business, or were self-employed, your Social Security reflects modest lifetime earnings. There was no employer pension. This is what you have.
Your net increase – after Medicare takes its cut – is $38.10 per month. One medical trip to Denver or Colorado Springs can consume that entire “raise.”
The Band-Aid That Proves They Know
Congress created something called “Hold Harmless” – a rule that prevents your Social Security check from decreasing when Medicare premiums spike.
If your COLA isn’t big enough to cover the Medicare increase, they cap your premium to keep your check from going down.
That rule is an admission of guilt.
Congress knows Medicare increases destroy Social Security raises. They know it harms seniors on fixed incomes. They know the two programs work against each other.
Instead of fixing it, they created a band-aid.
The band-aid doesn’t work for everyone:
- New Medicare enrollees (just retired): No protection
- SSDI recipients: Only 2% get protection
- Anyone who pays Medicare directly: No protection
- Higher-income beneficiaries: No protection
About 30% of Medicare beneficiaries get no protection at all. They pay the full premium increase.
The other 70% get partial protection – Medicare can’t make their check go down, but it can consume their entire COLA. They don’t lose ground in absolute dollars, but they fall behind in purchasing power.
And as the SSDI case shows, even the protection that exists gets applied inconsistently. Mid-year changes. No notification. No recourse for people who fear challenging the federal government.
Why They Won’t Fix It
The fix exists. The Bureau of Labor Statistics already calculates a Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) that measures what seniors actually spend money on – more healthcare, more housing, less transportation.
If Social Security used CPI-E instead of the formula designed for working-age people, your COLA would reflect your actual costs.
Cost: About $64 billion over ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Congress won’t appropriate it.
They could cap Medicare premium increases at the COLA rate. Don’t let Medicare consume your raise.
But that requires general revenue to subsidize Medicare. Congress won’t do it.
So you get Hold Harmless instead – a complicated workaround that proves they know the system is broken while doing nothing to fix it.
What It Means Going Forward
The Senior Citizens League calculates Social Security benefits have lost 36% of their purchasing power since 2000.
Every year, the announcement: “2.8% cost-of-living adjustment!”
Every year, Medicare takes more of it.
Every year, what’s left buys less than it did before.
You worked. You paid in. You followed the rules. The federal programs promised to protect your retirement.
Instead, one federal program uses the wrong inflation measure for seniors. Another federal program has to track actual healthcare costs. And the gap between them grows every year.
Congress knows they’re measuring your inflation wrong. They created a band-aid rule that proves they know. And they refuse to fix it because using an accurate measure would cost too much.
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