Every Medicare Advantage plan that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota sells is being cancelled for 2027, and the insurer says new plans will be available to more than 80 percent of the people enrolled today. The company announced the restructuring in a newsroom release dated October 1, 2026. Medicare Open Enrollment, which opens October 15, is where the choice gets made.
The Blue Cross Minnesota plan cancellations leave the replacement choice unfinished: the cost calculator spreadsheet in The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit compares plans on cost, drugs and doctors.
Compare the Blue Cross replacement plans on drugs and doctors before December 7 →
What the Blue Cross newsroom release says was cancelled
The announcement, titled “Restructured Medicare offerings for 2027,” is on the insurer’s own newsroom. It says current Medicare Advantage plans are being cancelled in order to relaunch new offerings, per Medicare rules, and that those rules required the cancellation of all current products so that a revised portfolio could be relaunched. The wording leaves no room for a surviving legacy plan: the cancellation covers the whole Medicare Advantage lineup, not a handful of weak performers. The release does not name the specific Medicare rule that required the step, and it does not say whether any member is moved into a replacement plan automatically.
The restructuring does not reach every Blue Cross Medicare product. The release says Medicare Supplement plans and standalone prescription drug plans remain available statewide, and that Medicare Cost plans continue in their current locations. The Platinum Blue Cost plans are named as the ones that stay put. Those are different products from Medicare Advantage, which is why the headline figure, a cancellation of every Medicare Advantage plan, can sit beside a list of Blue Cross Medicare products that carry on.
The more-than-80-percent figure and what it leaves unsaid
The number that governs who has a Blue Cross replacement is the insurer’s own. The release says new Blue Cross Medicare Advantage plans will be available to more than 80 percent of current Medicare Advantage members. That is a forward-looking statement about availability for 2027, and it is the company’s figure for the whole of its Minnesota membership, not a count of enrollees or a county-by-county list.
Blue Cross does not publish how many members are enrolled in the cancelled plans, and it does not publish how many fall outside the more-than-80-percent group. The release states the share with a replacement and stops there. Members outside that share are told the Medicare Supplement and standalone drug plan options remain, which is a route to Original Medicare coverage plus add-ons rather than a replacement for the Medicare Advantage plan itself. Nothing in the release says which counties or plan types make up the remainder.
Dana Erickson, Blue Cross’s president and chief executive, framed the decision in terms of the company’s status. “As a non-profit health plan, Blue Cross has a responsibility to act in the interest of being able to serve all members for years to come,” Erickson said in the release. The statement explains the posture; it does not say what changed in the Medicare rules or why a full cancellation was the required form.
Who contacts whom, and the dates that matter
The release says affected members are receiving personalized communication from Blue Cross about their 2027 plan options, including letters. Blue Cross lists a Medicare enrollment line at 1-844-777-0191, open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Central time, Monday through Friday, and general customer service at 1-800-382-2000 or 651-662-8000.
The calendar is the same one every Medicare member follows. The state of Minnesota’s Medicare Open Enrollment page, last modified September 17, 2026, gives the dates: October 15 through December 7. The release gives the same October 15 to December 7, 2026 span for 2027 coverage.
What Medicare’s own pages say happens without a choice
Medicare.gov’s special enrollment period page covers the case of a plan that is not renewed. The window to switch runs from December 8 to the last day of February of the following year, and the default for a member who does nothing is stated plainly: enrollment in Original Medicare if no other Medicare Advantage plan is joined before the current plan ends. The Blue Cross release does not say how Blue Cross treats members who make no election, so the Medicare.gov rule is the only published default in the sources read.
Medicare’s guide to Medigap adds a second route that sits behind the first. The guide to Medigap health insurance, CMS Product No. 02110, March 2026 edition, lists a plan leaving Medicare and a plan that stops giving care in the member’s area among the situations with a guaranteed right to buy Medigap Plan A, B, C, D, F or G, with no medical underwriting. The window runs to no more than 63 days after the Medicare Advantage coverage ends. The Blue Cross release does not say whether the company treats its cancellations as either situation, so a member who intends to rely on a Medigap right would need the wording of the termination notice itself.
Cancelled plans hand the comparison work to each member
A replacement plan is a new plan. It has its own premium, its own drug list and its own network of doctors and hospitals, and none of those details live in a newsroom announcement. They live in the plan documents that arrive with the member’s personalized communication. A member in the group with a Blue Cross replacement has to hold that plan against the doctors and prescriptions already in use, and against the plans of other insurers sold in the same county, before December 7.
The group without a Blue Cross replacement has a harder version of the same task, because the choice widens to include Original Medicare with a Medigap policy and a separate drug plan, each with its own enrollment clock. The more-than-80-percent figure tells a member nothing about which side of the line a particular county falls on, and the release publishes no county list.
Every step of the choice can be made without paid help. Medicare’s 1-800-MEDICARE line, 1-800-633-4227, handles plan questions, and Minnesota Aging Pathways at 800-333-2433, Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., offers help the state page describes as complimentary.
Replacement plans arrive with their own drug lists and doctor networks
The Blue Cross Minnesota cancellation turns the December 7 Open Enrollment deadline into a plan-by-plan comparison for every member of a cancelled plan. The unfinished job is matching each replacement against the prescriptions and doctors that member already uses, and doing it before the choice window closes.
The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit includes a prescription-by-plan comparison and a provider call script, which turn a list of medications and doctors into questions that can be put to each replacement plan.
Set the Blue Cross replacements beside a prescription list before December 7 →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the figures and dates were checked against Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota’s newsroom release, Medicare.gov and the state of Minnesota’s Open Enrollment page.
