Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:01:22 -0500
From: Dave Dodson 
Newsgroups: soc.retirement misc.invest.financial-plan
Subject: Re: medicare premium based on pre-retirement income?
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On Aug 10, 8:55 am, rick++  wrote:
> A financial columist (Brurns) got letters from new Medicare recipients
> many were being charged the medicare monthly surcharge which
> is $161 in 2007 (increases to $384 by  2009) automatically
> subtracted from your social security check.  Apparently the SSA
> defaults your income at age 63 to determine your medicare premium,
> when you may or may not have retired yet.
>
> http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10162.html

I'm not sure what you are whining about.

They use your income on the last federal income tax return available
from the IRS. You can supply a later one if it is to your advantage.

Only singles with modified adjusted gross income exceeding $200,000 or
marrieds with modified adjusted gross incomes exceeding $400,000 on
that federal income tax return will pay $161. This will be only a few
percent of people applying for Medicare Part B, and the extra cost
would represent less than about 0.4% of annual income.

> There is a procedure to correct this in the SSA memo, but requires
> lots of paperwork.

Certain life events streamline the correction process. If you want to
appeal based on something else, the form is about a half page long.
You might call that a lot of paperwork, but I wouldn't.

Dave