Humana has told investors it will pull out of Medicare Advantage plans that cover roughly 600,000 members for the 2027 plan year, and it expects to move only about four in ten of those people into another plan it still sells. For everyone else, the plan they use today simply will not exist in January, and the only window to pick a replacement is the fall enrollment period. This is not a benefit tweak or a premium increase. It is a plan ending, and it lands on households that built their doctors, drug coverage, and out-of-pocket math around a plan that is going away.
What Humana actually said on its earnings call
The number comes from Humana’s own second-quarter 2026 results and management commentary, which several trade outlets covering the call reported in detail. The insurer said the 2027 exits will affect about 600,000 Medicare Advantage members, or roughly 8 percent of its 7.2 million MA enrollees, as it drops the least profitable plans to hit a target pre-tax margin of at least 3 percent by 2028. As Healthcare Finance News reported from the call, the company said most of the plans being cut carry star ratings of 3.5 or lower for the 2027 bonus year, though executives framed the decision around profitability rather than stars alone.
The recapture figure is the part that matters most for a household. Becker’s Payer Issues, also summarizing the earnings call, reported that Humana recaptured just over 40 percent of the members hit by its 2025 exits into other Humana plans and expects a similar share this time. Flip that around and roughly 360,000 people will not be offered a comparable Humana plan at all. They will be shopping the open market.
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How you find out, and when
If your plan is one being discontinued, you should receive a formal Annual Notice of Change and a separate non-renewal notice from Humana. Those letters go out in the fall, ahead of the enrollment season, and reporting on the exits has pointed to September as the month the notices begin arriving. The letter is the document that tells you your plan is ending; do not wait for it to start comparing options, but do keep it, because it confirms your right to make a change.
The replacement window is Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period, which runs October 15 through December 7 every year, with new coverage starting January 1. During that window you can join a different Medicare Advantage plan or switch back to Original Medicare and add a standalone Part D drug plan. If you do nothing and your plan is non-renewing, you can be left without drug coverage and exposed to a late-enrollment penalty later, so the fall action is not optional.
The special right most people miss
Losing a Medicare Advantage plan because the insurer pulled it triggers a Special Enrollment Period and, importantly, a guaranteed-issue right to buy certain Medigap policies. When a plan leaves your area or the insurer stops offering it, Medicare grants you guaranteed-issue protection for specific Medigap plans if you decide to return to Original Medicare. That means an insurer must sell you one of the protected Medigap policies without medical underwriting and cannot charge you more for health problems. Outside these windows, Medigap insurers in most states can deny you or raise your price based on your health, so this is a rare open door.
The practical move is to compare the total picture, not just the premium. A different Advantage plan may keep your monthly cost low but change which doctors are in network or how your prescriptions are tiered; returning to Original Medicare plus Medigap and a drug plan usually costs more each month but caps your exposure and lets you see any provider who takes Medicare.
What to check before you pick a replacement
Start with your prescriptions. Run your exact drug list through the Medicare Plan Finder, which shows each plan’s total estimated yearly cost for your specific medications, not just the sticker premium. A plan that looks cheap can carry a deductible or a copay tier that makes a single expensive drug cost more than a pricier plan would. Then confirm your doctors and preferred hospital are in the new plan’s network, because Advantage networks change from plan to plan and year to year.
None of this requires paying a broker or buying anything on the phone. Medicare’s own comparison tools are free, and every state runs a State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) that gives free, unbiased one-on-one counseling to people navigating exactly this kind of forced switch. For 600,000 households, the plan ending is out of their hands, but the replacement decision is not, and the fall window is when it gets made.
Why waiting until December is the costly mistake
The single biggest error affected members make is treating the fall notice as something to deal with later. The enrollment window closes December 7, and plans fill their appointment calendars and phone lines as the deadline nears, so a household that starts comparing in late November faces rushed decisions and long holds. Starting in October, as soon as the annual notices land, leaves time to run drug lists, confirm networks, and weigh Original Medicare with Medigap against another Advantage plan without pressure. There is also a quieter risk in delay: if you let the window pass without acting and your plan is ending, you can be left in Original Medicare with no drug coverage and exposed to a Part D late-enrollment penalty that follows you for good. None of that happens if you make the switch early, and the tools to do it — the Plan Finder and free SHIP counseling — are no busier in October than they are in December, only far less crowded.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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