2008 Medicare Premiums: Information about the Latest Premiums for Medicare

Medicare is a health insurance for people over the age of 65 and also for people who are disabled. With Medicare, most of the healthcare services will be covered. For 2008, Medicare announces that it will increase its premiums for Part B by about 3.1 percent. Although this don’t sound much for most people, you need to imagine what it would be like for seniors who are already facing high payments on out of pocket costs, steadily rising cost of prescription drugs, co-payments, and also what they pay for in premiums on Medigap or Medicare Supplement Insurance.

Just imagine, just in the year 2000, the premium for Medicare Part B was only around 45 dollars. In 2008, you should expect to pay around 96 dollars for the monthly premiums. For seniors, this can easily outpace their cost of living adjustments.

A lot of people blame this increase due to the privatization of Medicare and also because of unchecked national healthcare costs. Although private insurers promised that they would be able to provide cheaper monthly premiums, what happened was it steadily increased over the years along with the out of pocket costs and prescription drug costs.

These are the things that you should expect in year 2008. If you are on Medicare, you might as well prepare for the premium increase as not preparing for it will leave you with higher expenses and unstable household budget.

In 2008, expect the Medicare Part B premium to increase and you should be well prepared for it.