You may receive a direct bill from your Medicare plan for the unpaid portion of your monthly premiums.

As background, there are a number of ways to pay your Medicare plan premium and one of the most popular options to pay your Medicare Part D or Medicare Advantage plan premium is to request direct or automatic withdrawal from your Social Security benefits check.

Unfortunately, it may take the Social Security Administration (SSA) 2 or 3 months (or more*) to coordinate the premium payment with your Medicare plan - and once the SSA begins the payments, the first Social Security check deduction may be for multiple months (the current month's premium and any past months' unpaid premiums.

Because the amount of the unpaid premiums can add up to a large sum, the government anticipates that there may be situations where a person's Social Security benefit check is not adequate to cover all of the unpaid premiums and notes:

If your monthly Social Security benefit isn't enough to cover multiple [Medicare Part D] premium payments at one time, the premiums won't be deducted. Your plan will bill you directly and you can pay them directly. You also can arrange with your plan for the premiums to be automatically withdrawn from your checking or saving bank account.

(Source: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services)

*  In early days of Medicare Part D, a person noted that they waited 10 months before SSA began making premium deductions, and then SSA deducted all 10 months of (unpaid) Medicare premium at one time from the person’s SS benefit check.

As an alternative: You may be required to pay the monthly premiums yourself before your SS check deductions begin.

It is possible that your Medicare plan may ask you to pay your premiums before the SSA deductions begin or you may be sent a payment book to pay your monthly premiums - and then later you can contact the Medicare plan and choose to change to SSA benefit check deduction as a payment method (instead of the payment or coupon book).

In fact, since the SSA sometimes needs up to 3 months (or more) to organize the SS check premium deductions, some Medicare Part D plans are now requiring plan members (even those who enrolled early in the AEP) to pay their premiums using a coupon book or EFT (electric fund transfer) so that premiums are paid starting in January (even though the plan members elected to pay premiums via SS deduction on their enrollment applications).

For more information see: Our Frequently Asked Question:
“Why am I no longer allowed to have my Medicare Part D premiums automatically deducted from my monthly Social Security check?”