The 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment that Social Security beneficiaries received for 2026 looked modest on paper. In practice, it is even smaller than it appears.

Research from the Boston College Center for Retirement Research shows that Medicare Part B premium increases will consume more than 25 percent of the COLA for most beneficiaries [1]. The math is straightforward: Medicare premiums are deducted directly from Social Security checks, so when premiums rise faster than the adjustment, the net benefit shrinks before retirees see a dollar.

The Economic Times put the dynamic in starker terms, noting that the 10 percent increase in Medicare Part B premiums effectively turns a 2.8 percent raise into something closer to 2 percent for the average beneficiary, and less for those with higher supplemental coverage costs [2].

This is not a new problem, but it is worsening. The COLA is calculated using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, which does not weight healthcare costs the way retirees actually experience them. Medical inflation consistently outpaces the general index, creating a structural gap between the adjustment and the expenses it is supposed to cover.

For the roughly 67 million Americans receiving Social Security, the gap between headline COLA and net benefit is not an abstraction. It is the difference between affording prescriptions and splitting pills, between keeping the thermostat at 68 and dropping it to 62. The 2.8 percent number made the news. The number that matters is what is left after Medicare, and that number is considerably less cheerful.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, New York