Two Julys in a row, Medicare Advantage insurers combed six months of claims data and sent enrollees a personalized letter listing which dental, vision or over-the-counter benefits sat untouched. That mailing is now optional, starting with the 2027 plan year. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services eliminated the requirement inside a broader deregulatory package finalized this spring, leaving enrollees to track their own unused benefits without a federal prompt.
The Letter CMS Required Starting in 2024
The mailing existed because of a single rule. In its Contract Year 2025 Medicare Advantage and Part D final rule, published April 4, 2024, CMS ordered every Medicare Advantage plan to issue a “Mid-Year Enrollee Notification of Unused Supplemental Benefits” to each enrollee, personalized and mailed between June 30 and July 31 of the plan year.
The letter had to name every supplemental benefit the enrollee had not touched in the first six months of coverage, describe the benefit’s scope and any cost-sharing, explain how to access it, flag network requirements, and list a customer service number. CMS built the requirement on a specific finding: in 2022, more than 99% of Medicare Advantage plans offered at least one supplemental benefit, with a median of 23 per plan, and vision, hearing, fitness and dental were the most common. Rebate dollars funding those benefits had grown to roughly $337 billion over the prior decade, with the 2023 Medicare Trustees Report projecting $67 billion more for 2024 alone, and CMS said the notice was meant to make sure that spending reached enrollees rather than sitting unused. The agency tied the requirement to the Biden-Harris administration’s Competition Council and a July 2021 executive order on economic competition, framing the mailing as a tool for consumer decision-making rather than a compliance formality.
Inside the decision kit: A cost calculator spreadsheet comparing plans on cost, drugs and doctors, a prescription-by-plan comparison, a provider call script and the Open Enrollment calendar. Open The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit.
Proposed in November, Finalized by April
The rollback was not a late addition. CMS first floated it in the Contract Year 2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D proposed rule, published November 25, 2025, under the same “Reducing Regulatory Burden and Costs in Accordance with Executive Order 14192” heading it would carry in the final version. The proposed text already read: rescind the requirement for MA plans to send mid-year notices about unused supplemental benefits, bundled with four other proposed cuts covering account-based health plans’ disclosure duties, MA quality-improvement health-disparity activities, utilization-management-committee health-equity duties, and call-center hours for the Limited Income Newly Eligible Transition program.
CMS took public comment on that package for roughly four months before finalizing it April 2, 2026, with the mid-year notice rescission surviving unchanged from proposal to final rule.
A Rescission Filed Under Regulatory Burden
The final rule, issued under file numbers CMS-4208-F3/CMS-4212-F, keeps the section title from the proposal and states the outcome without qualification: “Rescinding the requirement for MA plans to send mid-year notices about unused supplemental benefits.” The final version also added a sixth burden-reduction item that was not in the November proposal, lifting restrictions on when licensed agents and brokers may contact beneficiaries, while leaving the mid-year notice rescission exactly as CMS had proposed it. CMS describes the group of changes together as removing “duplicative and burdensome regulatory requirements.”
What the Notice Was Meant to Catch
The underlying benefits remain widespread even as the notice about them disappears. In 2026, 98% or more of individual Medicare Advantage plans still offer vision (99%), dental (98%) or hearing (98%) coverage, according to KFF’s annual analysis of CMS Landscape and Benefit files, the health policy research organization’s yearly review of plan offerings. An allowance for over-the-counter items is offered by 66% of individual plans this year, down from 73% in 2025; a meal benefit has fallen to 57% from 65%; remote access technology dropped to 48% from 53%; and transportation for medical needs dropped to 24% from 30% over the same year. KFF researchers Meredith Freed, Nancy Ochieng, Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek and Tricia Neuman write that “there is not yet data available about utilization of these benefits or associated costs, so it is not clear the extent to which supplemental benefits are used by enrollees.” That is the same gap the rescinded mid-year notice was built to address at the individual level.
A Federal Prompt That Enrollees Now Must Replace Themselves
For a household enrolled in Medicare Advantage, the practical change is narrow but real. No mailed reminder will arrive this summer, or in any summer after, pointing out an unused dental cleaning, an eyeglass allowance or a leftover balance on an over-the-counter card before the plan year closes it out. Most supplemental benefits do not carry over into the next plan year, and CMS’s own 2024 rulemaking remains the only official document explaining why the agency once treated that gap as significant enough to regulate. The 2027 rule does not substitute a lighter-touch disclosure or a shorter notice; the requirement is simply gone. The Annual Notice of Change that plans still must mail every September looks ahead to next year’s premiums, drugs and network, and it was never built to report which of this year’s benefits went unused. Nothing in the 2027 rule assigns that job to another document, so anyone wanting a mid-year check on unused benefits going forward will need to request it directly from the plan, since no federal deadline compels the plan to volunteer it.
The Letter That Stopped Arriving
The rescinded notice was the only federal mechanism that told a household, mid-year, which supplemental dollars remained on the table before the plan year reset. Nothing has replaced it, so finding an unused dental credit, vision allowance or over-the-counter balance now depends on the enrollee checking a plan portal, an Explanation of Benefits or member services directly. Open Enrollment for 2027 plans adds a second task: weighing what a current plan still covers against what a new one would offer instead.
The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit is a 42-page decision kit built around a cost calculator spreadsheet that compares plans on cost, drugs and doctors, along with a prescription-by-plan comparison, a provider call script and the Open Enrollment calendar.
Compare what a current Medicare Advantage plan still covers against next year’s options in The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit.
AI-assisted research and drafting; reviewed by an editor.
