Medicare Advantage Plan Exits for 2027: What 3.8 Million Enrollees Should Do Before Dec 7

At least 3.8 million Medicare Advantage enrollees will have to shop for new coverage for 2027, according to a Modern Healthcare review of CMS data published October 1. That’s well above the roughly 2.6 million people who lost their plan for 2026, which makes this the largest forced switch in years.

Non-renewal letters are landing now. Humana’s notices, covering about 600,000 members, are dated October 2. Medicare’s Open Enrollment runs October 15 through December 7, 2026, so you have about two months to make a clean switch.

How Big the 2027 Exit Wave Is

The numbers jumped once CMS released its 2027 plan landscape on September 29. Here’s where things stand:

• At least 11 insurers that sold individual Medicare Advantage plans in 2026 are leaving the program entirely for 2027, up from seven a year ago.
• About 512,000 people in 14 states need a new carrier because their insurer is pulling out of their area.
• 181 counties will have no Medicare Advantage plan at all in 2027, up from 67 this year.
• CMS set hard enrollment caps on 15 regional insurers in 11 states for the first time.

The big national names are trimming too. Centene, UnitedHealthcare, CVS/Aetna and Elevance are each dropping dozens to hundreds of counties, and Humana is cutting thousands of individual plan options even while it enters a few new areas.

Analysts’ county counts differ a bit depending on how they slice the CMS files, so I’d trust your own notice over any headline number.

Some of the exits are health-system plans. Providence, Memorial Hermann and Christus Health are among the system-owned insurers that won’t sell Medicare Advantage at all in 2027.

Why Insurers Are Leaving Even With a Pay Raise

CMS finalized an average 2.48% payment increase for 2027 back in April, worth more than $13 billion to the industry. That was far better than the near-flat 0.09% CMS floated in January.

It wasn’t enough to keep insurers in thin markets. Medical costs and utilization have outrun what plans priced for, and insurers are protecting margins by cutting service areas instead of absorbing losses. Rural and lower-density counties go first, because there aren’t enough members to spread the risk.

The odd part: for people who keep a plan, the headline numbers look calm. CMS projects the average Medicare Advantage premium will fall from $14.37 a month in 2026 to about $12 in 2027, and the national plan count barely moves (5,553 to 5,532).

Over 99% of beneficiaries still have at least one plan available. Stability on average just hides a lot of disruption county by county.

What a Non-Renewal Notice Actually Means

A non-renewal notice means your plan won’t exist for you on January 1, 2027. It’s different from the Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) every enrollee gets each fall, which only lists next year’s cost and benefit changes for a plan that’s continuing.

If you get one, you have three extra protections on top of regular Open Enrollment:

• A Special Enrollment Period (SEP) that runs from December 8, 2026 through February 28, 2027. You can join another Medicare Advantage plan, add a standalone Part D plan, or go back to Original Medicare.
• A guaranteed-issue Medigap right. You can buy a Medigap plan without health questions or a pre-existing condition wait. Apply as early as 60 days before your coverage ends, and no later than 63 days after.
• No penalty for switching mid-cycle. Choosing a new plan because yours left isn’t treated as late enrollment.

The Medigap right is the one I’d underline. Outside your first six months on Part B, most states let Medigap insurers charge more or turn you down based on your health. A plan exit is one of the few times that door reopens.

Federally, the guaranteed-issue plans are A, B, D, G, K and L, plus C and F if you were eligible for Medicare before 2020. Some states add more protections.

What to Do Before December 7

The SEP gives you until February, but I wouldn’t plan on using it. Here’s the order I’d work in:

1. Read the notice the day it arrives. Confirm it’s a non-renewal, not an ANOC, and note any deadline it lists.
2. List every drug at its exact dose. Formularies vary a lot, even between plans from the same insurer.
3. Run the comparison on Medicare Plan Finder. Compare total yearly cost (premium plus expected copays and drug costs), not just the premium. It’s the same total-cost math from my guide to choosing a health insurance plan.
4. Call your doctors’ offices. Ask which 2027 plans they’ll take. Networks change by product and by county, so “same insurer” doesn’t mean same doctors.
5. Price Medigap before you pick another Advantage plan. If you might want Original Medicare, get a Plan G quote while your guaranteed-issue right is open.
6. Enroll by December 31 so your new coverage starts January 1.

My Medicare Open Enrollment 2027 guide walks through the Plan Finder comparison step by step. If money is tight, check whether you qualify for Medicare Extra Help on drug costs before you choose a Part D plan.

Two Ways This Plays Out

Linda, 71, lives in a rural county where her only Medicare Advantage plan is leaving and no other plan is offered for 2027. She can’t simply switch to another Advantage plan. Instead she enrolls in Original Medicare plus a standalone Part D plan in November, and uses her guaranteed-issue right to buy a Medigap Plan G with no health questions.

Her monthly premiums go up compared to her old $0 Advantage plan. But her worst-case out-of-pocket risk drops a lot, and she isn’t locked into a network anymore.

Ray, 68, gets his notice in October and figures he has until February. He does nothing, so on January 1 he’s moved to Original Medicare with no drug coverage. He picks a new Advantage plan on January 20, and it starts February 1.

That leaves Ray paying full price for his blood thinner for all of January. If he’d waited past 63 days without drug coverage, he could also have picked up a permanent Part D late-enrollment penalty. Same rights as Linda, but a worse result just from timing.

Where People Get Tripped Up

The one I hear most often is people treating a non-renewal like a routine ANOC and tossing it. If you’re on Medicare Advantage, open every piece of plan mail between now and November.

A few other mistakes I see:

• Assuming your insurer’s other plan keeps your doctors. It often doesn’t. Check provider directories, then confirm with the office directly.
• Reading “leaving the state” headlines as your answer. Insurers often stay in some counties and leave others. Only your notice tells you what’s happening to your plan.
• Forgetting the SEP and Medigap windows are separate. The SEP ends February 28, 2027. The Medigap guaranteed-issue right ends 63 days after your old coverage stops.
• Losing a grocery or flex card without noticing. Supplemental perks don’t carry over. If your food allowance mattered to your budget, see my breakdown of Medicare Advantage grocery benefits for 2027, which are shrinking under the new chronic-illness eligibility rules.

What I’m Watching Into 2028

The next markers are on a predictable calendar:

• October: more insurer letters and the 2027 Social Security COLA announcement.
• November: CMS’s official 2027 Part B premium, deductible and IRMAA brackets. My 2026 Medicare coverage changes guide will get the confirmed figures.
• Early 2028: CMS’s advance notice of 2028 payment rates, the first real signal of whether next fall brings another wave of exits.

My read: as long as insurers keep cutting unprofitable counties rather than raising premiums, plan exits will stay an annual event, not a one-off. I’ll update this page when the final 2027 enrollment counts come out and again when the 2028 rate notice drops.

This post is general information, not personalized Medicare advice. For free one-on-one help, your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) can review your options with you.