The chances of a tepid cost-of-living-adjustment for 2017 could soon have federal retirees cautiously watching how health insurance premiums will rise this fall.
The hold harmless provision lets these beneficiaries deduct increased health care costs directly from Social Security, allowing the remaining premium to stay lower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The remaining 30 percent of Medicare Part B beneficiaries not covered by hold harmless\u2014an estimated 16 million retirees\u2014have to pick up the slack, meaning their premiums could rise, a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association estimates that if the COLA rises between 0.1 and 0.2 percent, retirees who are held harmless could see premiums spike 42 percent or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So a non-hold-harmless beneficiary currently paying $104.90 for Medicare Part B could see their bills jump to $149 or higher with a low COLA. The higher the COLA goes, the lower the premium increases will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the COLA question sounds familiar, it\u2019s because it\u2019s almost an identical situation to what federal employees faced last year, when a last-minute budget deal kept premiums from jumping more than 50 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because of the deal, if there\u2019s no COLA, non-hold-harmless beneficiaries would pay $122.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
July\u2019s CPI-W numbers dropped 0.2 percent. Though the current annual rate is 234.789, above the year-to-date mark of\u00a0233.806, the next two months of CPI-W numbers will determine the 2017 COLA rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
August\u2019s CPI-W numbers will be announced by the Department of Labor on Sept. 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The chances of a tepid COLA for 2017 could soon have federal retirees rooting for no COLA at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":54096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":15,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[31,15,68,69],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2714],"class_list":["post-18387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-management","category-leadership","category-pay-benefits"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"QHDXENRFSFELXBUT5X3YJCVKNU","arc_canonical_url":"\/management\/2016\/08\/25\/low-2017-cola-worse-than-none-at-all\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n