This is one of the very few advantages of not having a significant pension. But it requires a *lot* of saving (and not only in TIRAs and 401Ks but also taxable and/or Roths) and decent long-term investment returns to get there.
But once there, I'd have taxable IRA/401K withdrawals, and a tiny pension (about $8K a year at 65), which are all fully taxable.
Let's say I get that $8K in my old, frozen Megacorp pension at 65, and I withdraw another $20K from my TIRA/401K accounts. Now I'm up to $28,000 a year in taxable income plus maybe another $5,000 in gains on taxable accounts (interest, dividends, cap gains). That's $33K.
We would probably get about $20,000 a year (combined) in SS, so our "adjusted income" for the purposes of SS taxation would be $43,000 (the taxable $33,000 from pension, TIRA and 401K plus half of the $20K SS benefit) -- which keeps only 50% of our SS taxable (if that).
So that's $53,000 in income on a very small amount of taxes and an AGI probably low enough to pass most means tests. And it's even easier to do before the pension kicks in with the additional $8,000 of unavoidable taxable income.
At that point if it didn't screw up my means testing or jack up my taxes into a higher bracket, I'd probably withdraw more from my TIRA/401K as I could at the low rate. If I needed more money above and beyond that I could take more income from taxable and Roth investments.
Having said all that, I'd still rather have the big pension. It would just be *horrible* for these plans to be messed up if my wife got the ministry gig and became eligible for their pension plan.