IRMAA at 65: Will Your Income Raise Your Medicare Premium in Orange County? (2026)

IRMAA (the Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount) is a surcharge Medicare adds to your Part B and Part D premiums if your income is above certain thresholds, based on a tax return filed roughly two years earlier. Many Orange County retirees are surprised by it in their first year on Medicare because that lookback year often reflects a final year of full working income, not retirement income.

What IRMAA Actually Is

IRMAA stands for Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount. It is not a separate insurance product, not a penalty for enrolling late, and not something you apply for — it is an automatic add-on that Social Security calculates and applies to two specific parts of Medicare: Part B (medical insurance) and Part D (prescription drug coverage, whether you get it through a standalone Part D plan or a Medicare Advantage plan that includes drug coverage). If your income is above a certain level, Social Security tacks an extra amount onto your monthly premium for each of these. The base premium for Part B and the premium of your chosen Part D plan stay the same for everyone; IRMAA is simply added on top for higher earners.

It is important to separate IRMAA from the Late Enrollment Penalty (LEP), because the two are frequently confused and they work completely differently. The LEP is a permanent penalty for not signing up for Medicare when you were first eligible and didn’t have qualifying alternative coverage. IRMAA has nothing to do with enrollment timing — it is purely a function of income, and it is reassessed every single year. That means a retiree can owe IRMAA one year, drop out of it the next year as income falls, and potentially re-enter it later if income rises again (for example, from a large capital gain or a big retirement account withdrawal).

IRMAA also is not unique to California or Orange County — it is a national Medicare rule administered by the Social Security Administration. But because household incomes and the cost of maintaining a home in many Orange County communities run higher than the national average, a larger share of local retirees end up crossing into an IRMAA tier than in lower-cost parts of the country. Understanding the mechanics before you enroll is the best way to avoid an unpleasant surprise on your first Medicare premium statement. For a broader look at what Medicare costs and covers at 65 in this region, see our Medical Insurance at 65 in Orange County: Complete Guide (2026).

It also helps to understand how IRMAA is actually billed. If you already receive Social Security retirement benefits, your Part B premium — including any IRMAA surcharge — is typically deducted directly from your monthly Social Security check, so the increase shows up automatically rather than arriving as a separate invoice. If you haven’t yet claimed Social Security benefits, or if your Part D IRMAA surcharge isn’t fully covered by your benefit amount, you’ll receive a separate quarterly bill from Medicare for the difference. Either way, the underlying determination comes from Social Security, even though Medicare (CMS) is the agency that ultimately administers the premium billing.

One more distinction worth making clear: IRMAA does not apply to Medigap (Medicare Supplement) premiums. Medigap plans are priced and sold by private insurance companies under rules set by each state — in California, that includes the Medigap Birthday Rule discussed later in this article — and those premiums are unrelated to your income or your IRMAA status. IRMAA only touches the two government-administered pieces of your Medicare costs: Part B and Part D.

The Two-Year Lookback: Why Your First Year on Medicare Can Be the Most Expensive

The single most misunderstood part of IRMAA is the lookback period. When Social Security determines whether you owe an IRMAA surcharge, it does not look at your current income or even last year’s income. Instead, it uses your Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) from the federal tax return you filed two years before the current year. So for a person enrolling in Medicare during 2026, Social Security typically looks at the tax return filed for the 2024 tax year.

This two-year gap exists because tax return data takes time to become available to the IRS and, in turn, to Social Security. It is a purely administrative lag, not a judgment about your current financial situation. But the practical effect is significant, especially for people turning 65: your very first year of Medicare premiums can be priced off your very last full year of pre-retirement income — the year in which you were likely earning the most, before you scaled back hours, retired outright, or transitioned into fixed retirement income.

A Common Sequence in Orange County

A typical pattern looks like this: someone works full-time through most of their early-to-mid 60s, then retires at or near their 65th birthday and enrolls in Medicare. Their income from the year they were still working — commissions, a full salary, a business sale, or a large bonus — becomes the number Social Security uses to set their first year of Medicare premiums. Meanwhile, their actual income in the year they’re paying those premiums may have dropped substantially because they are no longer working. The result is a mismatch: higher premiums calculated from a year that no longer reflects reality.

This is precisely the kind of situation Form SSA-44 exists to fix, which we cover in detail later in this article. If you are still working through your final year before Medicare and are trying to plan your last paycheck, COBRA transition, and Medicare start date together, our Retiring at 65 in Orange County: Coordinating Your Last Paycheck, COBRA, and Medicare Start Date (2026) guide walks through how these pieces fit together.

There’s also a subtler timing wrinkle worth knowing about. If you enroll in Medicare mid-year — for example, because your 65th birthday falls in June — the tax return Social Security uses for that first year’s IRMAA determination may still be the return filed two years earlier, not a partial-year estimate. In other words, the lookback year doesn’t shift just because you didn’t have Medicare for all twelve months of the year in question. This is one more reason the first year of Medicare tends to be the year most likely to include an income mismatch — the lookback mechanics don’t adjust for the fact that you’re brand new to the program.

It’s also worth noting what happens if, for whatever reason, Social Security doesn’t yet have a tax return on file for the standard lookback year — for instance, if you didn’t file a return, or if the IRS hasn’t yet transmitted your data. In that case, Social Security may use your return from the year before that (a three-year lookback) as a fallback, or, if no return is available at all, may ask you to provide an estimate of your income directly. These fallback scenarios are relatively uncommon but can occur for people with irregular filing histories or with returns still processing at the time Medicare enrollment is finalized.

How the Income Tiers Work

IRMAA is structured as a series of income tiers, or “brackets.” Each tier sits above a MAGI threshold, and once your income crosses into a given tier, both your Part B and your Part D premiums increase by an amount tied to that tier. Move up another tier, and both surcharges increase again. There are multiple tiers above the base level, and the highest tier applies to the highest earners, who pay the largest surcharge on both Part B and Part D.

It’s worth understanding the shape of the system even though the exact dollar breakpoints are intentionally left out of this article, because they are indexed and adjusted annually and we do not want to publish a number that could be outdated by the time you read this. Here is the general structure without specific figures:

Note that the tier thresholds are different for single filers versus married couples filing jointly, and there is also a separate, narrower set of thresholds for married individuals who file separately. Because these numbers are adjusted for inflation every year and are set by federal statute and CMS guidance, the only reliable place to check the current-year exact dollar amounts is directly at ssa.gov/medicare/cost or medicare.gov. We deliberately avoid publishing specific thresholds or surcharge dollar amounts in this article because any number printed here would be stale within months.

One more mechanical point worth knowing: IRMAA is assessed per person, not per household. If you are married and both spouses are on Medicare, each spouse’s premium is evaluated individually against the same MAGI figure from your joint tax return, so a high joint income can mean both spouses see a surcharge on their own separate premiums simultaneously.

If you’re still comparing Original Medicare against Medicare Advantage as you approach 65, it’s worth reviewing our Medical Insurance at 65 in Orange County: Complete Guide (2026) alongside this article, since IRMAA applies to both paths in largely the same way.

The tiers themselves are set in federal statute and then adjusted for inflation each year by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which announces the coming year’s Part B premium, Part D base amounts, and all IRMAA thresholds every fall, typically in the same announcement covering the standard Medicare premium for the upcoming year. This is also why financial and retirement planners generally caution against citing IRMAA numbers from a prior year’s article, brochure, or online calculator — a number that was accurate two years ago may no longer reflect the current bracket structure. The safest approach, every single year, is to check ssa.gov/medicare/cost or medicare.gov directly before making any income-related decision that might affect your Medicare premiums.

It’s also worth understanding that Part D IRMAA works slightly differently from Part B IRMAA in one respect: the Part D surcharge is added on top of your particular plan’s premium, whether that premium is on the lower or higher end of what’s available in Orange County, whereas the Part B surcharge is added to a single, nationally uniform standard premium. In practice, this means your total Part D-related IRMAA cost depends both on your income tier and on which specific plan you’ve enrolled in, while your Part B IRMAA cost depends only on your income tier.

Why This Catches Newly-65 Orange County Retirees Off Guard

Orange County has a higher concentration of professionals, business owners, and dual-income households than many parts of the country, and that shows up directly in how many local retirees brush up against an IRMAA tier in their first year or two of Medicare. It’s not that Medicare treats Orange County differently — the rules are identical nationwide — it’s that local income patterns make the lookback trap more common here.

The dynamic tends to show up most in coastal and higher-income communities such as Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, and Corona del Mar, where households frequently include a working spouse still earning a salary, a small business or professional practice being wound down gradually, investment income from a diversified portfolio, or the sale of a home or business around the time of retirement. Any of these can push a household’s MAGI from two years prior well above the standard threshold, even if the retiree’s actual income in the year they start Medicare has already dropped substantially.

A few specific patterns we see repeatedly in these communities:

• The “one final big year” problem. A retiring professional works a full final year at peak income, sometimes with a retirement bonus, unused PTO payout, or accelerated vesting — pushing that year’s MAGI higher than any prior year, right as it becomes the lookback year for their first Medicare enrollment.
• The home-sale timing problem. Selling a highly appreciated home — common in Orange County’s coastal markets — can generate a taxable gain that inflates MAGI in the lookback year, even for retirees who otherwise live on a modest fixed income.
• The still-working-spouse problem. One spouse retires and enrolls in Medicare at 65 while the other continues working; because IRMAA is based on the joint tax return, the working spouse’s income affects the retired spouse’s Medicare premium too.

None of these situations are unusual or improper — they’re simply ordinary parts of a comfortable retirement transition. But they illustrate why so many first-time Medicare enrollees in these communities are startled by an IRMAA determination letter that seems to contradict their current financial reality. The fix, covered next, exists precisely for situations like these.

Business owners and independent professionals — a common profile throughout Orange County’s coastal and inland communities alike — face a related version of this problem. A retiring physician, attorney, dentist, or business owner who sells a practice or business around age 65 may see a final year of income that includes both ordinary income and a lump-sum gain from the sale, compounding the mismatch between the lookback year and their actual post-retirement income. In these cases, the life-changing event that ultimately qualifies for an SSA-44 adjustment is typically the retirement itself, not the sale of the business, so it’s important to correctly identify which event applies when filing.

It’s also worth noting that IRMAA determinations are based on IRS data shared with Social Security, and that process runs on a delay of its own — meaning a retiree’s IRMAA letter can sometimes arrive well after Medicare coverage has already started, adding to the sense that the surcharge came out of nowhere. Knowing in advance that this letter is likely to arrive, and understanding why, takes much of the surprise out of the process even when the paperwork itself still requires some follow-up.

The Fix: Form SSA-44 and the “Life-Changing Event” Appeal

If your IRMAA surcharge is based on a tax return that no longer reflects your current income because of a specific, defined life event, you can ask Social Security to use more recent income information instead. The mechanism for this is Form SSA-44, “Medicare Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount – Life-Changing Event.”

Social Security recognizes a specific, limited list of life-changing events that qualify for this kind of adjustment. The most common ones relevant to new Medicare enrollees include:

• Retirement or reduction in work hours. If you or your spouse stopped working or significantly cut back hours, and that caused your income to drop, this is the most common qualifying event for someone turning 65 and leaving the workforce around the same time.
• Marriage. A change in marital status that affects your household income and filing status.
• Divorce or annulment. If your income was previously combined with a spouse’s on a joint return and that is no longer the case.
• Death of a spouse. The loss of a spouse’s income (or, in some cases, the loss of a pension) is one of the qualifying events, and it is one Social Security explicitly plans for on the SSA-44 form.
• Loss of income-producing property due to a disaster, sale, or other event beyond your control.
• Loss of pension income, such as a plan termination.
• Employer settlement payment related to a company closure or bankruptcy.

The form asks you to estimate your current or expected MAGI for the relevant year and to explain which life-changing event applies. If Social Security agrees the event qualifies and the income estimate is reasonable, they will use the more current, lower income figure to recalculate your IRMAA determination — potentially reducing or eliminating the surcharge going forward.

What This Means in Practice for a New Retiree

If you retired from full-time work shortly before or around your 65th birthday, and your IRMAA determination letter is based on your last working year’s tax return, “retirement” itself is very likely a qualifying life-changing event. This is the single most common and most useful SSA-44 scenario for people newly on Medicare in Orange County — and it is worth filing proactively rather than assuming the surcharge is simply unavoidable.

It’s worth being clear about what SSA-44 does and doesn’t do. It does not erase or forgive an IRMAA surcharge that was correctly calculated based on your past income — it simply allows Social Security to substitute a more current, more accurate income estimate when a qualifying event means the old data no longer reflects your situation. If your income genuinely remains high even after the life-changing event (for example, a substantial pension plus significant investment income continuing after retirement), an SSA-44 filing may still result in an IRMAA determination, just possibly at a lower tier than the original letter indicated. The form is about accuracy, not automatic relief.

Also worth knowing: an approved SSA-44 adjustment is not necessarily permanent. Social Security will still return to using your actual filed tax return data once it becomes available for the relevant year, so the estimate you provide on the form is essentially a bridge until your real post-event income shows up in the normal two-year lookback cycle. In many cases this means a retiree files SSA-44 once around their retirement date, and then simply lets the standard lookback process take over in subsequent years as their genuinely lower retirement income flows through naturally.

What Documentation Social Security Typically Wants — and the Appeal Timeline

Filing Form SSA-44 goes more smoothly when you come prepared with documentation that supports both the life-changing event and your estimated current income. While exact requirements can vary by local Social Security office and by the specific event, retirees generally want to have on hand:

• A copy of your most recent IRMAA determination notice from Social Security, since it identifies which tax year and income figure triggered the surcharge.
• Proof of the life-changing event itself — for retirement, this is typically a letter from your former employer confirming your retirement date, or a Social Security statement showing you stopped receiving wages.
• For divorce, a copy of the divorce decree; for death of a spouse, a death certificate.
• An estimate of your current-year MAGI, along with any documentation that supports that estimate, such as a pension statement, Social Security benefit statement, or a recent pay stub showing reduced hours.
• Your most recent federal tax return, even though it may not yet reflect the life-changing event, for reference.

You can submit Form SSA-44 by mail or in person at a local Social Security office; it is not submitted online. Because Orange County has several Social Security field offices, an in-person appointment can sometimes resolve documentation questions faster than mail, though processing time still varies by office workload.

On timing: there is no strict deadline tied to your Medicare enrollment date for filing an SSA-44 — you can file it as soon as the life-changing event has occurred and you can reasonably estimate your new income, and you can also file it later if you receive an IRMAA determination letter and only then realize an adjustment applies to you. That said, filing sooner generally means the corrected premium takes effect sooner, so it is worth addressing as soon as you have your documentation together rather than waiting. If Social Security denies the request or you disagree with the outcome, there is also a formal appeals process, which begins with requesting a reconsideration through Social Security directly.

If you are also navigating enrollment deadlines, Medigap timing, or where to get help locally, our Medicare in Orange County, California 2026: How to Apply, Where to Enroll, Locality, Deadlines, and the Complete FAQ is a good companion resource, and California’s free counseling program, HICAP (Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program), can also help you understand and prepare an SSA-44 request at no cost.

If Social Security denies your SSA-44 request, or approves it but at a level you believe is still inaccurate, the next step is a formal reconsideration request. This begins the standard Social Security administrative appeals process: a reconsideration is typically handled by someone who was not involved in the original decision, and if you still disagree with that outcome, you can request a hearing before an administrative law judge. These further appeal stages are used far less often than a straightforward SSA-44 filing — most retirees with a clear qualifying event and reasonable documentation get their adjustment resolved at the initial SSA-44 stage — but it’s useful to know the escalation path exists if your situation is more complicated, such as a dispute over whether a particular event qualifies at all.

Keep in mind that Social Security’s own staff processes a large volume of these requests nationwide, and local office wait times can vary, particularly during the months surrounding open enrollment when call and appointment volumes spike. Bringing complete documentation on your first attempt — rather than a partial packet that generates a follow-up request — is generally the fastest way to get an accurate determination without multiple rounds of back-and-forth. If you’re also still finalizing your Medicare enrollment timeline around a retirement date, our Retiring at 65 in Orange County: Coordinating Your Last Paycheck, COBRA, and Medicare Start Date (2026) guide can help you sequence the SSA-44 filing alongside your broader enrollment steps.

Retirement-Income Planning: Roth Conversions and Withdrawal Timing

Because IRMAA is based on a two-year-old tax return, the decisions you make with your retirement accounts years before you actually enroll in Medicare can have a real effect on whether — and how much — IRMAA you pay once you’re on it. This is a general planning consideration, not tax advice, and anyone considering these strategies should work with a qualified tax professional or financial advisor who can look at their full picture.

Roth Conversions

A Roth conversion — moving money from a traditional, pre-tax retirement account into a Roth account — generally creates taxable income in the year of the conversion, which raises MAGI for that year. If that conversion happens to fall in a year that later becomes an IRMAA lookback year, it can push you into a higher IRMAA tier for that one year, even if your income is otherwise modest. Some retirees choose to do larger Roth conversions well before their Medicare enrollment years specifically to avoid having a conversion-inflated income show up in an IRMAA lookback window, while others accept a temporary IRMAA increase as a worthwhile tradeoff for the long-term tax benefits of Roth conversions. There is no universally correct answer — it depends on your broader retirement and tax picture.

IRA and 401(k) Withdrawal Timing

Required minimum distributions (RMDs) and voluntary withdrawals from traditional IRAs and 401(k) accounts also count toward MAGI. A retiree who takes a larger-than-usual withdrawal in a given year — to fund a major purchase, a large home repair, or simply because of how their RMD schedule falls — may see that reflected in a higher IRMAA tier two years later. Spreading withdrawals more evenly across years, where feasible, can help keep MAGI more level and reduce the odds of an unexpected IRMAA jump.

The broader point is that IRMAA is not just a “set it and forget it” cost that applies once you turn 65 — it is a moving target tied to income decisions made in prior years. Anyone approaching Medicare age who is also actively managing retirement account withdrawals or considering Roth conversions should factor the two-year IRMAA lookback into that planning, ideally in conversation with a tax advisor, well before the Medicare enrollment window opens.

Other Income Events Worth Watching

Beyond Roth conversions and account withdrawals, a handful of other financial events can move MAGI enough to affect a future IRMAA determination. Capital gains from selling appreciated investments — including a highly appreciated home in a market like Newport Beach or Laguna Beach — count toward MAGI in the year the sale closes. So does taxable interest, dividend income, and rental income from investment property. None of these are unusual for a financially comfortable retiree, but bunching several of them into the same tax year, purely by coincidence of timing, can push a household temporarily into a higher IRMAA tier than their typical, ongoing income would otherwise suggest.

For retirees with some flexibility over when a sale or withdrawal happens, spreading major taxable events across different years — rather than concentrating them in a single year — can help smooth out MAGI and reduce the odds of a large one-year IRMAA spike two years later. This kind of sequencing is exactly the sort of decision best made in partnership with a CPA or financial planner who can model the actual tax and IRMAA tradeoffs for your specific numbers, since the right answer depends heavily on your full financial picture rather than any general rule of thumb.

Who IRMAA Does NOT Affect

It is easy to read an article like this and come away thinking IRMAA is a near-universal cost of turning 65 in Orange County. It isn’t. The truth is the opposite: most Orange County retirees living on typical retirement income — Social Security benefits, a modest pension, and ordinary withdrawals from retirement savings — never see an IRMAA surcharge at all. IRMAA is specifically designed to apply only to income levels well above what a typical retired household reports, and the base tier (no surcharge) is where the large majority of Medicare beneficiaries nationally, and in Orange County, actually fall.

Some additional context on who is unaffected:

• If your MAGI from the relevant lookback tax return falls at or below the standard threshold, you pay the standard Part B premium and the standard premium of whatever Part D or Medicare Advantage plan you choose — no add-on at all.
• Beneficiaries who qualify for Medicare Savings Programs or Extra Help due to limited income and resources are, by definition, well below any IRMAA tier and are not affected.
• A single high-income year that is not part of an ongoing pattern — for example, one unusually large capital gain — typically causes only a temporary, single-year IRMAA adjustment, not a permanent one; your IRMAA status is reassessed annually based on rolling two-year-old income data.

The purpose of covering IRMAA in detail is not to suggest it applies to everyone, but to make sure the Orange County retirees who genuinely are affected — often precisely because they retired from a strong income, sold a home, or are managing a working spouse’s income — understand why it happened and that there is a legitimate path to correct it through Form SSA-44 when a life-changing event applies.

It’s also worth noting that a surviving spouse who continues on Medicare after the death of a partner does not automatically inherit an IRMAA surcharge that applied to the couple’s joint income — going forward, that surviving spouse’s IRMAA status is based on their own individual tax return filing status, which frequently results in a lower or eliminated surcharge once filing as a single individual rather than jointly, on top of whatever adjustment applies through the SSA-44 life-changing-event process itself for the year of the loss.

Put simply, IRMAA is one of the more misunderstood pieces of Medicare precisely because the people who hear about it tend to be the ones it affects, which can create the impression that it’s more universal than it actually is. For the majority of Orange County retirees living on Social Security, a modest pension, and ordinary retirement account withdrawals, IRMAA is a non-issue they will likely never think about again after confirming their standard premium at enrollment. If you’re weighing how Medicare fits alongside longer-term retirement questions, our Why 65 Is the Decision Point for Long-Term Care Planning in Orange County (2026) guide is a useful next read, since long-term care costs — unlike IRMAA — are not tied to Medicare at all and require separate planning.

How IRMAA Fits Into Your Broader Medicare and Retirement Planning

IRMAA doesn’t exist in isolation — it interacts with several other decisions you’re likely making around the same time you turn 65. If you’re weighing Original Medicare with a Medigap supplement against Medicare Advantage, it’s worth knowing that IRMAA applies to Part B either way, and it applies to Part D premiums whether you buy a standalone drug plan or get drug coverage bundled into a Medicare Advantage plan — so the IRMAA calculation itself doesn’t favor one path over the other. What does matter is timing: California’s Medigap Birthday Rule (Cal. Ins. Code §10192.11) gives you an annual window to switch Medigap plans without medical underwriting, which is a separate but related piece of planning worth understanding alongside your IRMAA exposure. Our California Medigap Birthday Rule: What Turning-65 Orange County Residents Need to Know (2026) guide covers that rule in full.

It’s also worth remembering that Part D itself has a statutory annual out-of-pocket cap of $2,000, which limits what you pay for covered prescriptions in a given year regardless of your IRMAA tier — IRMAA affects your monthly premium, not this separate out-of-pocket protection. And for households thinking further ahead about long-term care costs, which are not covered by Medicare, it’s worth pairing your IRMAA and Medicare planning with a broader look at long-term care options; our Why 65 Is the Decision Point for Long-Term Care Planning in Orange County (2026) article addresses that separately.

Because so many of the major Orange County health systems — Providence, Hoag, UCI Health, MemorialCare, and Kaiser Permanente Orange County — participate differently across Original Medicare and various Medicare Advantage networks, your plan choice and your IRMAA status are both worth reviewing together, ideally with someone who can look at your full income and coverage picture rather than either issue in isolation.

Timing your Medicare enrollment itself can also intersect with IRMAA planning. Some retirees have some flexibility over exactly when they leave employer coverage and start Medicare — for instance, choosing to delay a retirement date by a few months to land it more cleanly at the start of a new tax year, or coordinating a spouse’s retirement date with their own. While Medicare’s enrollment windows are governed by strict federal deadlines tied to your 65th birthday or loss of employer coverage (and missing them can trigger the separate Late Enrollment Penalty discussed earlier), the underlying decision of when to actually stop working and how income is structured in that transition year is often more flexible, and can meaningfully affect which tax year ends up as your future IRMAA lookback year.

None of this needs to be sorted out alone. A licensed insurance producer can help you understand how enrollment timing and plan selection work together, while a CPA or financial advisor is the right resource for the income and tax-timing side of the equation. Bringing both perspectives together before you finalize a retirement date tends to produce the smoothest transition into Medicare.

Frequently Asked Questions

Get Help Reviewing Your Medicare and IRMAA Situation in Orange County

IRMAA can feel like an unfair surprise when it’s based on a year of income that no longer reflects your retirement reality — but it is a well-defined, correctable part of Medicare, not a permanent penalty. Whether you’re trying to understand your first IRMAA determination letter, deciding when to enroll relative to your final working year, or weighing Roth conversion and withdrawal timing years before you turn 65, getting the sequencing right can meaningfully affect what you pay.

We Find Your Insurance is an independent California insurance brokerage serving Orange County retirees, led by licensed producer Joseph Antonucci. We don’t handle your tax filing or your SSA-44 paperwork directly, but we help you understand how your Medicare enrollment timing, plan selection, and coverage decisions fit together with the income realities — including IRMAA — that come with turning 65. If you’re planning your Medicare start date, comparing Medicare Advantage and Medigap options, or simply want a second set of eyes on your coverage before you enroll, reach out to We Find Your Insurance for a no-obligation conversation about your Orange County Medicare options.