Medicare Advantage 2027 Star Ratings by Insurer: 15 Five-Star Contracts (22 in 2026), 71% of Members at 4+

The national picture: fewer five-star contracts, same average

CMS’s own fact sheet gives the four-year trend for contracts that include drug coverage. The average is weighted by enrollment.

Source: CMS, “2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D Star Ratings” fact sheet, October 8, 2026, Table 1. CMS adds that about 37 percent of MA-PD contracts (188) earned four stars or higher for 2027 and, weighted by enrollment, about 71 percent of MA-PD enrollees are in such contracts.

Two things in the year-to-year line are worth reading together. The five-star count is volatile (38, 9, 22, 15), so a single year says little about whether a given insurer is stable. And the average barely moved (4.01 to 3.99), so the 2027 drop in five-star contracts is not a drop across the whole market. CMS lists methodology changes for 2027: two new Part D measures (concurrent use of opioids and benzodiazepines, and use of multiple anticholinergic medications in older adults), a respecified colorectal cancer screening measure, the return of one Care for Older Adults measure, and a weight of three, up from one, on the Improving or Maintaining Physical Health and Mental Health measures. CMS also says year-over-year changes “are normal and expected” because cut points are recalculated each year.

By insurer: our table from CMS’s own files

CMS publishes the ratings by contract and names a parent organization for each, but it does not publish them by insurer. We built the insurer view ourselves.

Source: CMS 2027 Star Ratings Data Table (Summary Ratings, October 8, 2026), CMS 2026 Star Ratings Data Table (Summary Ratings, updated July 22, 2026), and CMS Monthly Enrollment by Contract, October 2026. All averages and shares are our arithmetic. The first 14 rows are the 14 largest of the 131 parent organizations by members in rated MA-PD contracts; the last five are the other parents with a five-star contract.

How we computed it. We took every contract in the 2027 Summary Ratings table whose Part C, Part D and Overall ratings are all numbers; that is 508 contracts, the same count as CMS. We looked up each contract’s members in the October 2026 monthly enrollment file (CMS prints an asterisk for 10 or fewer, which we count as zero), grouped by the parent organization field, and weighted each overall rating by members. The same method over all 508 contracts gives 3.99 and 70.7 percent, which matches CMS’s 3.99 and “approximately 71%”. For the 2026 columns we use only contracts rated in both years, with the 2027 parent assignment and the same October 2026 members, so that only rating changes move the figures. That is not how CMS weights 2026 (it uses 2026 enrollment), so our 2026 numbers differ from figures computed on 2026 enrollment. Across the 468 contracts rated in both years, the same method gives 4.07 for 2026 and 3.99 for 2027 (our arithmetic). One contract changed parent: H2960 was “Hometown Health Plan, Inc.”, parent Renown Health, in the 2026 table and is “Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Nevada” in 2027, so Kaiser’s 2026 column includes that contract’s 2026 rating.

Three readings of the table, all arithmetic and none a judgment on a company:

• Humana is the large reversal. Its 30 rated contracts have no five-star contract, but 95.0 percent of members are in contracts rated 4 or more, against 42.1 percent for the same contracts on the 2026 ratings.
• Four insurers hold 64.1 percent of the people in rated MA-PD contracts (UnitedHealth Group, Humana, CVS Health and Kaiser: 22,493,945 of 35,077,515, our arithmetic), so their numbers decide the market average; the five-star list is mostly small contracts.
• The brand a reader knows may not be the parent. In the 2026 table, 15 contract lines carried the marketing name “Cigna HealthCare”, with Health Care Service Corporation as parent; in the 2027 table the word Cigna does not appear, and the same contract IDs (for example H4513 and H0439) carry the marketing name “HealthSpring”. A reader looking for Cigna will find HealthSpring.

The 15 five-star contracts

Source: CMS 2027 Star Ratings Data Table (High Performing Contracts, October 8, 2026) and the Table A1 appendix of the CMS fact sheet, which lists the same 15 contracts and the eight that repeat from 2026; enrollment from CMS Monthly Enrollment by Contract, October 2026; the 2026 name of H2960 from the CMS 2026 Summary Ratings table.

The 15 contracts belong to nine parent organizations. Two of them, MCS Advantage (H5577) and Triple S Advantage (H5774), are flagged “Puerto Rico Only” in the CMS table of Categorical Adjustment Index values, and between them they hold 481,462 of the 787,962 members (61.1 percent, our arithmetic). For a retiree on the mainland, the largest five-star contracts are Clover (155,135 members), the two UnitedHealthcare “Care Improvement Plus” contracts (45,252 and 8,859) and Leon Health (40,630). The CMS tables do not say which counties any contract serves; that comes from Medicare Plan Finder.

The 14 that lost five stars

Source: CMS 2026 Star Ratings Data Table (Summary Ratings, updated July 22, 2026): contracts with an overall rating of 5 that are not 5 in the CMS 2027 Summary Ratings table; enrollment from CMS Monthly Enrollment by Contract, October 2026. Contract names are as CMS prints them.

Most of the drops are half a star: nine of the 14 went from 5 to 4.5. The two with the most members are the two Elevance-owned MMM Healthcare contracts (196,122 members together, our sum), now at 4.5. CMS says the 2027 ratings will affect 2028 quality bonus payments to plans; a half-star drop does not by itself mean a member’s plan changed.

What a five-star rating gives a retiree: the SEP in 42 CFR 422.62(b)(15)

Most people can switch Medicare Advantage plans only in the yearly election window or in another window tied to an event. Federal rules add one that depends on the plan’s rating. The text of 42 CFR 422.62(b)(15), read in the eCFR on November 9, 2026, gives a special election period when “The individual is requesting enrollment in an MA plan offered by an MA organization with a Star Rating of 5 Stars,” and says an individual “may use this SEP only once for the contract year in which the MA plan was assigned a 5-star overall performance rating, beginning the December 8th before that contract year through November 30th of that contract year.”

Source: 42 CFR 422.62(b)(15), eCFR, current text read November 9, 2026; CMS, “2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D Star Ratings” fact sheet, October 8, 2026.

Four low-performing contracts

CMS marks four MA-PD contracts with a low-performing icon for 2027 (last year it also marked four). They are H3814 (ATRIO Health Plans, 2,000 members), H4982 (Aetna Medicare, parent CVS Health Corporation, 9,358), H7389 (HealthSpring, parent Health Care Service Corporation, no members in October 2026) and H9066 (Nascentia Health Plus, parent Visiting Nurse Association of Central New York, 654). The icon rests on consistently low ratings; it is not a statement about the other contracts of the same parent.

A worked example (our arithmetic, hypothetical)

A retiree in a county where UnitedHealth Group offers a plan is told it is “a UnitedHealthcare five-star plan”. The CMS table says three of UnitedHealth Group’s 54 rated MA-PD contracts have five stars: H0710, H2292 and H5652, with 61,107 members between them, 0.66 percent of the 9,224,282 members in its rated contracts. Another 55,551 members are in H3256, which was rated 5 for 2026 and is rated 3.5 for 2027. What decides which row applies is the contract ID printed on the plan’s documents (for example H0710-xxx), and Medicare Plan Finder shows the rating.

What a reader can do with this

• Find the contract ID, not the brand. The rating is attached to a contract such as H0710 or H4513. The ID is printed on your member card and plan documents, and it is the key to every table above and to the CMS data file.
• Mark the dates. Open enrollment ends December 7, 2026; a 5-star plan can be joined from December 8, 2026 to November 30, 2027, once; the 2026 five-star window ends November 30, 2026. Re-check Medicare Plan Finder, because the icon and the plan list can change.
• Do not read the star as a cost figure. CMS describes the overall rating as a weighted average of the Part C and D measure stars; it says nothing about your premium, your doctors’ network or your out-of-pocket limit. Our Medigap vs Medicare Advantage page sets out the premium and limit comparison and why leaving Medicare Advantage is easier than returning to Medigap.
• Check whether your plan is ending. A plan can have four stars and still be terminated for 2027; our plan exits page counts the individual plans ending and explains the 63-day Medigap rule.
• Check the drug side. Star ratings include Part D measures for MA-PD contracts, but the benefit changes for 2027 are on our Part D 2027 page.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

Sources, read and saved on November 9, 2026: CMS, “2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D Star Ratings” fact sheet (October 8, 2026); the CMS “2027 Star Ratings Data Table” zip (Summary Ratings, High Performing Contracts, Low Performing Contracts and CAI tables, October 8, 2026) and the “2026 Star Ratings Data Table” zip (Summary Ratings, updated July 22, 2026) from the CMS Part C and D Performance Data page; CMS Monthly Enrollment by Contract, October 2026, with its read-me; 42 CFR 422.62 (eCFR). We did not use the 2027 Star Ratings Technical Notes for any figure here. Insurer totals are our arithmetic from the files named above, and a figure computed with different enrollment will differ.

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