Part D's 2027 Deductible Is $700. Your Premium Comes Later.
What Changed
CMS ended the subsidy that held standalone drug premiums down.
On July 28, 2026, CMS announced that the Part D Premium Stabilization Demonstration ends with this calendar year. For 2026, that demonstration cut $10 off the base beneficiary premium at participating standalone plans and capped any single plan's year-over-year total premium increase at $50. Neither applies in 2027.
And CMS set the 2027 base beneficiary premium at $41.33. The 6% annual cap on that figure, written into the 2022 law, runs through 2029. That cap covers the base number only, not what any plan charges on top of it.
That's not your premium. It's the arithmetic your plan starts from.
Nothing here requires action today. The number that matters to you arrives in your own plan's letter.
The standard deductible goes to $700.
The CY 2027 Rate Announcement, dated April 6, 2026, sets the defined standard Part D deductible at $700. It was $615 for 2026. So $85 more comes out of your pocket at the counter in 2027 before your plan pays for anything.
But plans can go below the standard. Some waive the deductible on generics. Some apply it only to brand tiers. Yours may already do one of those, and the only place you'll find out is the letter your plan sends you this fall.
Read the letter.
The 2027 plan details land in September.
CMS said it'll publish the 2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D landscape — final average premiums and plan-by-plan detail — in mid-to-late September, once all offerings are finalized. Open enrollment runs October 15 through December 7, 2026.
Everything you'd compare today is a guess.
Do nothing until the letter arrives.
Today's Habit
Write your prescription list on one page today, and put it where your plan's fall letter will land.
Every Part D comparison you make in October runs off that list — drug names, strengths, quantities, and the pharmacy you actually use. Without it, you'll compare premiums, because premium is the only number printed large enough to read. And premium is the smallest part of what a drug plan costs you. Formularies change. Tiers change. Your list mostly holds.
Start with the piece already fixed. The standard deductible rises $85 in 2027, from $615 to $700. A plan that waives the deductible on your tier is worth exactly that $85 to you — and you find out which plans do it by running your list. Everything above the deductible depends on your drugs, not on the average. Skip this and October becomes an hour of hunting through drawers, which is how a plan gets renewed by default.
- Open your pharmacy's app, or pull your last three receipts.
- For each prescription, write the drug name, the strength, and how much you get per fill.
- Add how often you refill it.
- Write down the pharmacy you actually use, by name and location.
- Put the page in an empty folder marked "Drug plan — October."
Ten minutes. And you reuse it every October after this one.
When it's done: one page, every prescription, sitting in the folder where your plan's letter will go (the letter is called the Annual Notice of Change, which nobody tells you).
The Number
$41.33
That's the Medicare Part D base beneficiary premium for 2027, announced by CMS on July 28, 2026.
Nobody pays it.
It's a national starting point: a statutory calculation built from the bids plans submit for basic drug coverage, and every plan's own basic premium is figured from it. So it moves everything above it.
The 2022 law caps its growth at 6% a year through 2029. That's why this figure moves in small steps while the bids underneath it move in large ones. The 2027 national average monthly bid is $296.05.
And the cap covers this number only. What your plan charges you sits on top, and that number shows up in September.
Write $41.33 down next to whatever your plan quotes you. The gap between them is your plan, not Medicare.
On the Calendar
October 15, 2026 — Medicare open enrollment opens.
November 1, 2026 — Treasury resets the I bond fixed and inflation rates. The 4.26% composite applies to bonds issued through October 31, 2026.
December 7, 2026 — Medicare open enrollment closes.