What's Happening to Your Medicare Advantage Plan in 2027

What your letter already tells you

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has not published its county files for 2027 yet, so this page cannot yet show you what happened to the plans where you live. The notice your plan sent you can. It is the official notice about your own coverage, and it is the document to go by — now, and after those files arrive.

What happens if you do nothing

That depends on which of the cases above your letter describes. Your letter says which; if it is not clear, 1-800-MEDICARE hold your actual enrollment record and can tell you. The county files, when they arrive, will not say anything about your own enrollment that your notice does not.

If your plan is carrying on and the letter is the ordinary yearly notice: doing nothing keeps you in the plan, on next year’s terms. Those terms are what the notice lists, and a plan that carries on can still change its price, its list of covered medicines and its doctors.

If your plan is ending, or is dropping the county you live in: the plan itself stops at the end of the year, and everything it added stops with it — for most people the prescription drug coverage bundled into it, any extra benefits, and any yearly limit on what you pay for doctors and hospital care. (Not the yearly cap on what you pay for medicines — that one belongs to Part D and applies in any drug plan.) What carries on by itself is Original Medicare, your Part A and Part B. The drug coverage is the part worth attending to rather than leaving: going without it long enough can add a charge to what you pay for it later.

If your plan is ending or dropping your county, and you get Extra Help paying for your medicines, or you have both Medicare and Medicaid, or the state pays your Part B premium: everything in the paragraph above still happens — the plan and everything it added still stop. What is different is the drug coverage and that charge. Medicare generally puts people in your position into a stand-alone drug plan rather than leaving them with none, and the late sign-up charge does not apply while you have that help. Medicare picks that plan without looking at which medicines you take, so it is still worth checking that it covers yours. It replaces the drug coverage only — not a plan’s dental, transport or other extras, and not the care coordination a Special Needs Plan gave you. And your Medicaid does not end because a Medicare plan does. If you are not certain whether any of this describes you, 1-800-MEDICARE can tell you.

If your plan is being folded into another one: you will be moved into the other plan, and that plan can have a different doctor network, a different list of covered medicines and a different price. Nothing to do and nothing has changed are not the same thing here, and your notice lists what is different.

The dates on your letter

Medicare’s Open Enrollment runs from October 15 to December 7. That is the window most people use to change plans for the year ahead.

If your plan is ending, or is dropping your county, the deadline that applies to you may not be that one, and it may run later — but a plan you choose after December usually does not start until the first of the month after you choose it, so a later deadline is not a reason to wait. Your notice says which dates are yours, and 1-800-MEDICARE can confirm them.

When the county figures arrive

CMS has usually published the files this page is built from in early October. That is when they have landed in past years rather than a date CMS announces in advance, and they have arrived later than that before. We will not know the day until it happens — which is why this page tells you what your notice means instead of asking you to wait for us.