Molina Healthcare has decided which half of its Medicare business to keep. The insurer will stop selling its standard Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug plans starting with the 2027 plan year, walking away from roughly $1 billion in annual premiums, while doubling down on the $5 billion book of business it runs for people who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. For Molina’s current Medicare members, that split is not a technicality: dual-eligible enrollees keep their coverage, while anyone in a standard Molina Medicare Advantage plan will need to choose a new insurer before the year is out.
The $1 Billion MAPD Line Molina Is Dropping
Molina announced the exit on Feb. 5, 2026, alongside its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings. In remarks reported by Becker’s Payer Issues, CEO Joseph Zubretsky said the company “will exit the traditional MAPD product for 2027” because it “does not align with our strategic shift to focus exclusively on” its dual-eligible business. The discontinued line brings in about $1 billion a year in premiums, a real slice of Molina’s Medicare footprint, according to the company’s own fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results. Molina said the underperforming product is costing the company an estimated $1.00 per diluted share in 2026, a drag heavy enough to help send its stock sharply lower the day the announcement went out. As of Dec. 31, 2025, Molina counted roughly 262,000 Medicare members out of 5.5 million enrollees company-wide, so the MAPD line being closed touches a modest but real slice of a company built primarily around Medicaid.
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The $5 Billion Dual-Eligible Business Molina Is Keeping
The plans Molina is protecting are Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans, or D-SNPs, a category of Medicare Advantage built specifically for people enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid at once. As the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services explains, these plans exist to coordinate the two programs’ benefits and cost-sharing rules for people who qualify for both. Molina’s dual-eligible book represents roughly $5 billion in premiums, five times the size of the MAPD business it is closing down, and it is the piece of the Medicare portfolio the company is telling investors it intends to grow. That focus tracks with where Molina already makes most of its money: its core business has long been managing Medicaid coverage for low-income enrollees on behalf of states, so a Medicare product built around Medicaid-eligible members fits its existing operations more naturally than a standalone Medicare Advantage plan competing against national brands.
What Molina’s Medicare Advantage Members Need To Do Before 2027
Anyone currently enrolled in one of Molina’s standard MAPD plans will not be automatically shifted into a dual-eligible plan. Because most MAPD enrollees are not also on Medicaid, they will need to actively pick a new Medicare Advantage plan, a standalone Part D drug plan paired with Original Medicare, or another insurer’s product for 2027 coverage. That decision gets made during Medicare’s annual Open Enrollment window, which runs Oct. 15 through Dec. 7 each fall for coverage that starts the following Jan. 1, according to Medicare.gov. Insurers that discontinue a plan are required to notify affected members ahead of that window, so Molina MAPD enrollees should expect a formal non-renewal notice this fall rather than a surprise gap in coverage on Jan. 1, 2027. Molina members who are also on Medicaid and already sit in one of the company’s dual-eligible plans do not need to do anything differently because of this announcement; their coverage is the business Molina is keeping.
A Bigger Retreat From Standard Medicare Advantage
Molina’s exit is not happening in isolation. The company’s medical loss ratio, the share of premium dollars spent on medical care, rose to 91.7% for full-year 2025, up from 89.1% the year before, and its Medicare-specific ratio climbed to 92.4% as older, sicker enrollees used more care than the company had priced in. Molina told investors it now expects 2026 premium revenue of roughly $42 billion, a decline of about 2% from 2025, and adjusted earnings of at least $5.00 per diluted share, guidance that already accounts for the MAPD losses it is now moving to stop. The pattern lines up with a broader shift across the Medicare Advantage industry, where several national insurers have pulled back service areas, trimmed benefits or exited unprofitable counties rather than keep absorbing rising medical costs. For Molina, the fix was more surgical: keep the Medicaid-adjacent business it already understands, and let go of the standard commercial Medicare product that never fully worked for it. That leaves people on a Molina MAPD plan with one fewer national option once 2027 arrives, at a time when several competitors have also been narrowing their own footprints rather than expanding into new counties, which is part of why comparing plans carefully during this year’s enrollment window matters more than usual.
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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