A running count kept by Becker’s Hospital Review now shows 29 health systems that have ended, or are actively ending, a contract with a Medicare Advantage insurer at some point in 2026, up from 25 just weeks earlier. For the roughly half of Medicare enrollees who have chosen an Advantage plan over Original Medicare, that…

Molina Healthcare says it will drop its traditional Medicare Advantage prescription drug plans starting with the 2027 plan year, walking away from a product line that brings in roughly $1 billion a year in premiums. The insurer disclosed the move inside its own fourth-quarter 2025 earnings report, framing it as a strategic pivot rather than…

Genesis HealthCare System, the main hospital network serving Zanesville and Muskingum County, Ohio, has sent termination notices to four health insurers, telling them their contracts will end on January 1, 2027, unless the companies agree to new terms. The system says the move follows two years of rising claim denials and payment takebacks for care…

Starting October 1, insurance agents and brokers selling Medicare Advantage and Part D plans will no longer have to wait 48 hours after a beneficiary signs a permission form before pitching them specific coverage, and educational meetings can flow directly into sales appointments in the same room. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized…

A peer-reviewed study published in JAMA in February 2026 found that the share of Medicare Advantage enrollees forced out of their health plan jumped to 10 percent nationally heading into this year’s coverage, roughly ten times the historical average. In 12 states, more than one in five Medicare Advantage members had no choice in the…

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has finalized a rule that strips 11 measures out of the scoring system used to rate Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D prescription drug plans on quality. The agency says the measures it dropped were focused on administrative processes and areas where nearly every plan already scores about…

Most people never see a bill for Medicare’s hospital coverage. Decades of payroll taxes already paid for it by the time they turn 65. But for anyone who spent large stretches of a working life outside covered employment, Medicare Part A now comes with a real monthly charge, and the amount depends entirely on a…

Original Medicare has no yearly ceiling on what a patient pays out of pocket, and for someone facing a long hospital stay, the bill does not level off with time in the bed — it climbs in stages. A short admission can cost far less than a marathon one, and past a certain point, Original…

People on Medicare get one set window each fall to rework their coverage for the year ahead, and a plan chosen once and left alone can quietly turn expensive if premiums rise or a pharmacy drops out of the network. This year’s window opens October 15 and runs through December 7, and the choice made…

Medicare’s Part D base beneficiary premium for 2027 will be $41.33, according to the annual bid announcement the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released July 28, 2026. That figure matters less for what it is than for what it replaced: the same statutory formula that produced $41.33 also produced a second, higher result —…