January 2, 2027. A man walks into his pharmacy for the same blood pressure pill he has taken for years. The screen behind the counter reads $700. Not a copay. The deductible. Every penny out of pocket before Medicare Part D pays a dime.

On October 14, the Social Security Administration will announce a 3.5% cost-of-living raise. That is about $73 more per month for the average retiree. Two Medicare cost increases, one already locked in since April, will eat into that number before the check ever clears.

I can't stop thinking about this. The 2027 COLA is tracking at roughly 3.5%. That would be the biggest raise in four years. SSA announces it October 14 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. That is the same morning the September CPI drops. The average retired worker collects $2,088 a month. That means about $73 more per check. About $876 over a full year. Not bad. Seventy-one million people will see the number. Every cable channel will call it good news.

In 1992, Starbucks went public at a split-adjusted price of about $0.27.

Today it trades above $108.

That's a gain of roughly 40,000%.

$100 would have turned into $40,000. A $1,000 stake, almost half a million dollars.

Miss 1992 and you missed it. There's no going back for it.

So the better question is where the next one comes from.

The global coffee market is projected to reach approximately $380 billion by 2033. And the next big name in it may not be built on cafes at all.

It may start at the farm.

Green Coffee Company owns approximately 45 Colombian farms and 10 million coffee trees. It also holds exclusive third-party rights to Juan Valdez® coffee products across U.S. and Canadian retail and institutional channels.

Those products are already in Target, Walgreens and thousands of North American retail locations.

The company is still private. Everyday investors can buy in right now, no accreditation required.

Shares are $1.10 until September 30th — after that, the price changes.

_{^{*Disclaimer: This is a paid advertisement for Green Coffee Company's Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at https://invest.greencoffeecompany.com/. Timelines are subject to change. Listing on the NASDAQ is contingent upon necessary approvals, and reserving a ticker symbol does not guarantee a company's public listing.}}

_{^{Under Regulation A, a company may change its share price by up to 20% without requalifying the offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission.}}

I don't think most people realize that CMS locked in the Part D numbers five months ago. The raise has not been announced yet. The deduction already has. On April 6, CMS finalized the 2027 Part D standard deductible at $700. Up from $615. That is an $85 jump. A 13.8% increase. The COLA raise is 3.5%. The drug deductible hike is nearly four times that rate. It resets every January 1. Every standalone Part D enrollee owes the full $700 out of pocket before coverage kicks in. The first fill of the new year is always the most expensive receipt on the calendar.

Here's what worries me. The Part B premium is going up too. The Medicare Trustees project it will rise from $202.90 to $209.50 per month. That is $6.60 taken straight from the Social Security check before it deposits. For the 2026 COLA, Part B ate 32% of the raise. This time the bite is smaller. About 9%. But there is a third hit. CMS is ending what it calls the Part D Premium Stabilization Demonstration. In plain words, it was a federal subsidy. It held standalone drug plan premiums down by about $16 a month. CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz called it a "bailout" for insurers. Twenty-five million people are on standalone Part D plans. When the subsidy ends, premiums rise. CMS says most will pay less than $10 more per month. I hope that is true. Nobody knows yet what the final plan prices will look like.

I ran the math three times. Start with $73. Subtract $6.60 for Part B. That leaves $66.40. Net gain: roughly $66 to $72 a month. The Part D premium bump could add another $10. Spread the $85 deductible jump across 12 months. That is about $7 more per month in drug costs. The raise keeps shrinking. And that is before the income surcharge. Maybe you sold stock last year. Maybe you did a Roth conversion. Maybe you took a large RMD. Maybe one of those pushed your joint income above $224,000. Your Part B premium can hit $712.30 a month. The COLA does not shrink for those folks. It vanishes.

I get it. The headline says raise. The math says something else. Social Security benefits in 2026 are worth about 86.3 cents on the dollar compared to 2016. Benefits have lost 13.7% of their buying power over that span. To get back to even, the average check would need to rise by $295.85 a month. The actual raise is $73. That is a quarter of what it would take. We are falling behind. And the tax code makes it worse. The thresholds that decide whether our benefits get taxed have not moved since 1984. Each COLA pushes more of us above those lines. The "raise" becomes taxable income. Then it shrinks again.

13.8%. That is how fast the Part D deductible is climbing in 2027. Our raise is 3.5%. Our drug costs are rising nearly four times faster. CMS locked that number in five months ago. The COLA has not even been announced. The deduction already has.

Open enrollment runs October 15 through December 7. Plan-specific Part D premiums are dropping right now. Not every Part D plan charges the full $700 deductible. Some waive it. Some reduce it. If you auto-renewed last year without looking, you may be in a plan that charges every dollar. That window opens in 17 days. It shuts December 7.

Picture that man at the pharmacy counter on January 2. Same bottle. Same pill. Same pharmacy he has used for a decade. The only thing different is the receipt. He celebrated the raise in October. He is paying for it in January. The bottle does not care what the headline said.

More on this tomorrow.

— American Ledger