Updated August 24, 2026. Quick answer. The “hold harmless” rule protects
most Social Security recipients from having their check shrink because Medicare Part B’s
premium rose faster than their COLA — but it does not protect everyone, and it does not
mean your net increase equals the full COLA percentage. Three groups are excluded entirely:
people newly enrolling in Part B, anyone who pays Part B directly rather than having it deducted
from a Social Security check, and anyone who pays the income-related IRMAA surcharge.
What the rule actually protects
Hold harmless (Social Security Act §1839(f)) guarantees that your Social Security check
cannot go down in dollar terms because of a Part B premium increase — if the dollar
increase in your Part B premium would exceed your dollar increase from the COLA, the premium
increase is capped at whatever leaves your check unchanged. It says nothing about your check
going up less than the full COLA; it only stops it from going down.
Who is not covered
New Medicare enrollees. If you first enroll in Part B during 2026, you are
not protected by hold harmless for the 2027 premium change — you pay the full increase.
Anyone billed directly by CMS. If your Part B premium isn’t deducted from a
Social Security check (because you haven’t claimed benefits yet, or you pay Medicare directly),
hold harmless doesn’t apply — there’s no check for it to protect.
IRMAA payers. If your income triggers the income-related surcharge (roughly
$109,000+ single / $218,000+ joint on the 2025-income basis that sets 2027 premiums — see
the 2027 IRMAA brackets), the surcharge portion of your
premium is not protected by hold harmless.
Hold harmless is decided in a two-month window, and the calendar is the part that trips people up. The statute is one sentence with three tests in it, all of them dated. What it compares is not two premiums but two checks — and as CMS puts it in the notice that set the 2026 premium, “a benefit check for November is not received until December, but December’s Part B premium has been deducted from it.” So the comparison runs between the payment that arrives in December and the one that arrives in January, each net of its own premium. When the tests are met, CMS applies the protection for that January “and for each of the succeeding 11 months” — it holds for the whole year, not one payment. The three groups this page names as excluded each fail one of these tests, which is where the exclusions come from. CC BY 4.0.
The net-check math, worked through
Say your 2026 benefit is $2,200/month and the COLA lands at 3.6% — a $79.20 increase.
If your Part B premium rises from $202.90 to a projected $209.50–219, that’s a $6.60 to
$16.10 increase. For a hold-harmless-protected recipient, the premium increase can never exceed
the COLA dollar increase, so the check still rises — just by less than the full 3.6% once
the premium is netted out. An IRMAA payer or new enrollee sees the full premium increase land on
top, with no such floor.
The protection matters enormously in some years and almost not at all in others — and which kind of year it is turns on the COLA. Each row is the announced Part B standard-premium increase divided by the announced COLA: the monthly benefit at which a dollar of premium increase exactly eats a dollar of raise, and so the level below which §1395r(f) held the increase down. In 8 of these 17 years that level sat between $54 and $639 a month, well under most benefits, and in 5 more the standard premium did not rise at all, so there was nothing to cap. But in the 3 years drawn full width the COLA was 0.0% and there was no dollar increase to cap against at all, and in 2017 a 0.3% COLA against a $12.20 premium rise put the level at $4,067 — above almost every benefit in the country. CMS’s own notices confirm both: approximately 70% of Part B enrollees were held harmless for 2017, and for 2016 “the majority of Part B enrollees were held harmless and paid a premium of $104.90” instead of the $121.80 standard. Two honest limits. This is arithmetic on the standard premium, so someone already held harmless from an earlier year faces a different increase of their own. And nothing is plotted for 2027: on the projections this site publishes — a 3.5–3.6% COLA, and a premium of $209.50 (Medicare Trustees) to $219 (private forecasters) against 2026’s $202.90 — the level would land near $183–$460, but not one of those inputs is announced, so the row stays open. CC BY 4.0.
Every projected figure above is attributed to the organization that published it and is explicitly not yet announced by the government body that sets it. This page will be updated with the official figure the day it is announced, and the projection will be struck through rather than deleted, so the record of what was projected vs. what actually happened stays visible. See the full current-numbers register for every figure this site tracks, dated and sourced. General information, not tax or legal advice.
Whether hold-harmless bites in 2027 turns on two figures that do not exist yet: the COLA and the Part B premium. Your 2027 numbers tracks what is already settled for 2027 and when each of these two is published.
