Social Security and Medicare for older immigrants

[Crazy Cat 39,268]

This is my annual reminder for older immigrant couples (like my spouse and I).  

 

Social Security monthly retirement benefits (Age 62+)

 Can be earned:

1.  Based on immigrant's own work record OR

2. Based on spouse's work record (must be married for 1 year or more).  This does not affect the SS retirement benefit of the US spouse.  The immigrant is not required to have any SS work credit.  I believe the amount is 50% of spouse's monthly deposit.

 

Medicare (non-special qualifications)

1.  Immigrant must have been a Green Card holder for 5 years.

2.  Normally, immigrant must be 65 years old.  Immigrant can be entitled to receive FREE Medicare Part A (Example: US Spouse is already receiving SS retirement benefits and US spouse already receives free Medicare Part A).  Immigrant will pay the normal Medicare Part B monthly premiums (currently about $174.00) which is deducted from any monthly Social Security benefit deposit. 

 

In our case, I was not aware of the spousal Social Security benefit, so we applied for wife's Social Security and Medicare at the same time (on the same Social Security form) when she turned 65 years old.  It took Social Security only a few days to approve her SS retirement benefit and to start her Medicare Parts A & B.  Coupled with a good Medicare supplement (ours is Tricare For Life), this provides really good health care coverage. 

Edited February 14 by Crazy Cat

[NorthByNorthwest 216]

25 minutes ago, Crazy Cat said:

Social Security monthly retirement benefits (Age 62+)

 Can be earned:

1.  Based on immigrant's own work record OR

2. Based on spouse's work record (must be married for 1 year or more).  This does not affect the SS retirement benefit of the US spouse.  The immigrant is not required to have any SS work credit.  I believe the amount is 50% of spouse's monthly deposit.

 

To add to this, some countries have totalization agreements with the US so if you don't have enough work credits in the US you may be able to count work in those other countries as well into the US system.

 

In my case I worked for over 10 years in Japan so I qualify for basic Japanese benefits - if I for some reason were to not reach 40 quarters in the US I could transfer the Japanese credits (and lose Japanese benefits in the process). By retirement time I'll have to look into whether it is more beneficial to keep the Japanese benefit as-is or transfer to the US.

 

More info here: https://www.ssa.gov/international/agreement_descriptions.html#monthly

 

I don't know if any of this applies to Medicare benefits though...

Edited February 14 by NorthByNorthwest