Medicare Advantage Plan Exits 2027: 569 Individual Plans Ending, 2.15M Members, Medigap 63 Days

Two counts, two meanings

Two public numbers are being repeated this fall and they are not the same measurement.

Source: KFF, “Medicare Advantage Plan Availability Varies Widely by County for 2027,” October 9, 2026 (a secondary analysis; KFF excludes SNPs, employer plans and MA-only plans and does not include Connecticut); CMS “2027 Part C&D Plan Crosswalk” and its read-me, October 1, 2026; our joins described below.

KFF’s own examples show how local it is: three insurers that offered MA-PDs in 2026 are not offering them in 2027 in each of Brown, Lake of the Woods, Morrison and Renville counties in Minnesota; in Boyd County, Nebraska and five South Dakota counties a Medicare Advantage plan without drug coverage remains. KFF reports that UnitedHealth Group is “exiting 228 counties and entering 9 new counties” and Humana “exiting 62 counties and entering 4 new counties,” that Health Care Service Corporation exits 498 counties and enters none, and that Centene exits 359 and enters 15.

What the CMS file says, counted

We downloaded the CMS crosswalk for 2027 and for 2026 and the CMS monthly enrollment-by-plan files for October 2026 and October 2025, and matched each previous-year plan to its enrollment on contract ID and plan ID. We kept individual Medicare Advantage plans: contract numbers starting H or R, plan ID under 800 (800 and up are employer group plans), excluding special needs plans, PACE and cost plans. CMS prints an enrollment of 10 or less as an asterisk; we count it as zero. Thirteen plan rows in the 2027 file (11 of them terminated) and 16 in the 2026 file (all terminated) had no matching enrollment row; they are left out, and some may be individual plans, so the terminated counts are a floor.

Source: CMS plan crosswalk 2027 and 2026 and CMS monthly enrollment by plan, October 2026 and October 2025; all counts and percentages are our arithmetic from those files. Members of a reduced plan are not all affected: only those in the dropped counties are, and the file does not list counties by plan.

Read it carefully: the share of members in ending plans moved from 9.5 to 9.9 percent, which is not the jump the county headline suggests. The shift the file does show is toward partial exits. A reader whose plan is “renewed” can still be in a dropped county, and a reader whose plan is “terminated” may be in a company that has a new plan ID next door.

Which organizations are ending plans

Source: CMS plan crosswalk 2027 and CMS monthly enrollment by plan, October 2026; individual Medicare Advantage plans as defined above; our count. A company can appear in KFF’s county list and look different here, because a plan ID can end while the company keeps other plans in the same county. This table describes plan status in CMS files and is not a judgment about any company.

The Humana, UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health lines are also where most of the partial exits sit: plans renewed with a service area reduction hold 1,438,548, 1,201,363 and 631,071 members respectively (our count).

The largest ending plans

Source: CMS plan crosswalk 2027 (status “Terminated/Non-renewed Contract”) and CMS monthly enrollment by plan, October 2026. The full top 30 is in the CSV.

For the second line the CMS enrollment file names the marketing company as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. In the crosswalk, contract H5959 has eight terminated individual plan IDs (009 to 016) and, in the same contract, new individual plan IDs 019, 020, 021, 023 and 024 (“Essential,” “Select,” “Premier”). That pattern looks like a product line rebuilt under new IDs. The file does not say how members are moved or whether any of them gets a guaranteed-issue right; that depends on the notice the insurer sent and on state law.

What the rule says, in the primary text

The notice. Under 42 CFR 422.506(a)(2), an organization that does not intend to renew must tell CMS “by the first Monday in June” and each enrollee “by mail at least 90 calendar days before the date on which the nonrenewal is effective.” For coverage ending December 31, 2026 that is October 2, 2026 (our arithmetic).

The election right. Medicare & You 2027 says that when a plan stops participating, coverage “will end after December 31,” you can choose another plan from October 15 to December 7, with coverage beginning January 1, and you “also have a special right under federal law to join another Medicare health plan until the last day in February.” 42 CFR 422.62(b)(1) lists as a qualifying event that the organization has “discontinued the plan in the area in which the individual resides.”

The Medigap right. Section 1882(s)(3) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395ss(s)(3)) gives a right to buy a Medigap policy, with no pre-existing condition exclusion and no health-status pricing, to an individual enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan where there are circumstances permitting discontinuance of the election (paragraph (B)(ii)). For an involuntary termination the period is “the period beginning on the date that the individual receives a notice of termination and ending on the date that is 63 days after the date the applicable coverage is terminated” (paragraph (E)(ii)). For coverage ending December 31, 2026 the 63rd day is March 4, 2027 (our arithmetic). Medicare & You 2027 puts it in plain words: “You may have the right under federal law to buy certain Medigap policies within 63 days after your plan coverage ends,” and “Depending on your state, you may also have the right to buy a Medigap policy if your plan decides not to participate in Medicare for the coming year.”

Source: the documents named in the third column, read and saved on November 4, 2026. The window for Medigap begins when the notice is received, so it can open before the coverage ends. Which Medigap plan letters a person can buy under the federal right is not compiled here: the U.S. Code text we saved prints “A”, “B”, “C” or “F” in paragraph (C)(i), and we did not read a Medicare.gov page that lists more letters, so we mark the letters as not verified.

A worked example of the dates (our arithmetic, hypothetical)

A member of an ending plan receives the insurer’s notice on October 1, 2026. Coverage ends December 31, 2026. Under paragraph (E)(ii) the Medigap window opened on the date the notice was received and closes 63 days after December 31, 2026. January has 31 days and February 28, so day 59 is February 28 and day 63 is March 4, 2027. The Medicare Advantage election window that comes first, October 15 to December 7, 2026, ends 87 days before that Medigap window closes, so a person who waits for the later date has already missed the earlier one. The two rights are separate; the page does not say which, if either, a given person should use.

What a reader can do with this

• Find your own plan in the file. Your contract and plan ID are printed on your member card and notice (for example H5959-014). The CMS crosswalk page lists the file; search for the ID and read the status in the last column. “Terminated/Non-renewed Contract” and “Renewal Plan with SAR” mean different things, as the read-me defines them.
• Read the insurer’s notice for the dates. The notice is what starts the Medigap clock in the statute; the 90-day mailing rule and the 63-day tail are both counted from your own dates.
• Ask the people the CMS handbook names. Medicare & You 2027 tells readers to call their State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP), at shiphelp.org, or the State Insurance Department about Medigap rights, which vary by state; an insurance agent or broker may also be able to help.
• Keep the cost side separate. The Part B premium and any income-related surcharge are the same whichever coverage you hold; our Medigap vs Medicare Advantage page sets out the premium and limit comparison and the one-way door, and our Part D 2027 page covers the drug side of the same December 7 deadline.
• If your income pushes you into a higher tier, see the IRMAA brackets page for how a sale or conversion in the lookback year changes the Part B line.

This page explains public rules and files. It does not say which choice suits a person, and nothing here is insurance, tax, legal or investment advice. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

Sources, read and saved on November 4, 2026: CMS “2027 Part C&D Plan Crosswalk” (October 1, 2026) with its read-me, and the 2026 crosswalk (October 1, 2025), at cms.gov under Medicare Advantage/Part D Contract and Enrollment Data; CMS “Monthly Enrollment by Plan,” October 2026 and October 2025; Medicare & You 2027 (CMS handbook); 42 CFR 422.506 and 422.62 (eCFR); 42 U.S.C. 1395ss (Legal Information Institute text); KFF, “Medicare Advantage Plan Availability Varies Widely by County for 2027,” October 9, 2026, a secondary analysis of CMS landscape files. We did not obtain the CMS landscape files themselves, so the county exits are KFF’s and not ours; we also did not open a Medicare.gov page for the guaranteed-issue plan letters or a state-by-state table. All counts, shares and dates marked “our count” or “our arithmetic” are ours.

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