Suze Orman, Personal Finance Author and Host of the Women & Money Podcast, warned on her October 4 podcast that UnitedHealth Group is closing Medicare Advantage plans covering hundreds of thousands of members, putting affected seniors on a tight enrollment clock.
Humana, CVS Health through Aetna, and Centene are also scaling back, 24/7 Wall St. reported.
The nonrenewal notices should have been received by enrollees by October 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) deadline for most Medicare Advantage plans’ contracts with CMS ending December 31, 2026, the Center for Medicare Advocacy confirmed.
UnitedHealth and Humana account for most of the Medicare Advantage non-renewals
UnitedHealthcare confirmed to Bloomberg on October 1, 2026, that it is discontinuing plans covering about 390,000 members for the 2027 plan year.
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Humana disclosed on its July 29, 2026, earnings call that its non-renewals with CMS will affect approximately 600,000 members. The insurer retained slightly more than 40% of the members affected by its 2025 non-renewals, and it expects a similar rate this cycle, Humana Chief Financial Officer Celeste Mellet said.
Mark Meiselbach, lead author of a February 2026 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study on the non-renewals and an assistant professor and health economist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the American Journal of Managed Care that Medicare Advantage insurers are being forced to drop plans in markets where they can no longer operate at a profit.
<strong>The distribution is not going to be even, and enrollees in some markets may be left without any Medicare Advantage plans to choose from,</strong>
Meiselbach’s study found roughly 2.9 million Medicare Advantage enrollees, about one in 10, were forced out of their plans heading into 2026, and the 2027 non-renewals signal a continuation of that pattern.
Humana and UnitedHealth shed unprofitable plans to protect margins
Humana is cutting what Mellet described as the lower end of its profitability range, prioritizing plans with greater value-based care participation.
Jim Rechtin, Chief Executive Officer of Humana, said the company expects its 2027 bids to advance toward a pretax margin of at least 3% by 2028.
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UnitedHealth’s medical care ratio, the difference between income from premiums and expenditure on care, fell to 86.7% from 89.4% in the second quarter, which the company attributed to benefit design, pricing discipline, member mix and medical cost management initiatives, according to its Q2 2026 filing.
CMS finalized a projected payment increase for 2027 of an average of 2.48%, representing more than $13 billion in additional payments to plans.
A closing Medigap window could cost displaced members coverage they cannot replace
When a Medicare Advantage plan terminates, affected members revert to Original Medicare on January 1, 2027, if they take no action, Medicare.gov confirmed. Members who enroll in a replacement Advantage plan during open enrollment can keep their managed-care network.
However, if they do that, they give up something impossible to replace: a one-time guaranteed-issue right to buy Medigap without health underwriting, meaning without pre-screening by the insurance company. That right expires 63 days after the terminated plan ends, whether or not the member uses it.
Medicare Open Enrollment runs from October 15 through December 7, 2026, and members who rush into a replacement Advantage plan during that window will permanently forfeit the guaranteed-issue Medigap right, Medicare.gov noted.
Under that guaranteed-issue right, Medigap insurers cannot deny applications, charge higher premiums based on health history, or impose preexisting condition exclusions, Medicare.gov confirmed. Outside the 63-day window, most states allow carriers to reject applicants outright.
Kata Kertesz, managing policy attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, has warned that beneficiaries who stay in a Medicare Advantage plan for several years and later want to switch to Original Medicare will not benefit from the one-time guaranteed-issue right to buy Medigap without health underwriting, and may find themselves excluded from coverage because of pre-existing conditions or other reasons.
Beneficiaries dependent only on Original Medicare are subject to costs with no annual out-of-pocket cap, and a single hospital stay in 2026 has a $1,736 Part A deductible, while skilled nursing days 21 through 100 cost $217 a day, CMS data shows.
How affected members can protect their coverage before it closes
Kimberly Lankford, Medicare expert and author of “Medicare 101,” told Yahoo Finance that beneficiaries who discover their Medicate Advantage plan is no longer their best option should act immediately rather than waiting until the last week of open enrollment.
However, a special enrollment period for picking a replacement Medicare Advantage plan runs from December 8, 2026, through February 28, 2027, Medicare.gov confirmed.
Members should start by confirming whether their plan is being terminated outright or consolidated into another plan from the same insurer, because only a termination triggers the guaranteed-issue right, the Center for Medicare Advocacy has explained.
Displaced members should also request Medigap quotes in their ZIP code now, since premiums for the same standardized plan can differ by hundreds of dollars from state to state.
Those who choose Original Medicare must also enroll in a standalone Part D drug plan, because skipping that step exposes them to late-enrollment penalties that are permanent and recalculated each year, according to Medicare.gov.
The guaranteed-issue Medigap right runs on a parallel timeline, ending 63 days after the member’s old plan coverage ends. Seniors who let that window lapse may be denied supplemental coverage outright in 46 states, KFF reported.
Displaced members now have until December 7, 2026, to act on a federal safeguard that expires whether they use it or not.
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