Medicare will send $13.4 billion in quality bonus payments to Medicare Advantage insurers in 2026, according to an analysis published by KFF, the nonpartisan health policy research organization. That is up from $12.7 billion in 2025 and more than four times the $3.0 billion the program cost a decade earlier, in 2015. The bonuses arrive…

Humana is the second-largest company selling Medicare Advantage plans, covering about one in five of the program’s enrollees nationwide. That kind of footprint would normally translate into a proportional cut of the extra federal dollars Medicare hands out each year to reward higher-quality plans. In 2026, it has not worked out that way. Humana holds…

Millions of older Americans who take GLP-1 medications for obesity are now paying a flat $50 a month for the drugs, under a Medicare demonstration that started July 1, 2026. The Trump administration says the program has already produced a nine-figure savings total for seniors who previously had no coverage for these medicines, some of…

Becker’s Hospital Review runs a tracker that follows hospitals and health systems ending some or all of their Medicare Advantage contracts, and the number on it keeps climbing. Earlier this month it stood at 25 systems. As of August 31, it reads 28. This isn’t a one-time report — it’s a page Becker’s rewrites in…

Presbyterian Health Plan members in New Mexico are getting two different messages about their Medicare Advantage coverage, and the timing is what matters most. Nothing changes before January 2027 — same doctors, same drug coverage, same premiums for the rest of this year. But starting with the 2027 plan year, Presbyterian is dropping most of…

If you get your care from CarolinaEast Medical Center in New Bern, North Carolina, and you’re on a Medicare Advantage plan, the hospital building and your own doctor’s office are no longer treated the same way by your insurance card. One lost its in-network status two months ago. The other is on a countdown that…

Nine community and county hospital systems have walked away from a Medicare Advantage contract with Humana, Aetna or UnitedHealthcare so far this year, according to a running tally kept by Becker’s Hospital Review plus one small-market system confirmed independently. For patients in a big metro area, that usually means driving to a different hospital across…

Losing a primary care doctor is not the same problem as losing a hospital, and that distinction sits at the center of Mass General Brigham’s latest Medicare Advantage decision. Since January 1, 2026, most primary care doctors across the health system’s Eastern Massachusetts practices have been out of network for Medicare Advantage plans sold by…

Rhode Islanders who stuck with their UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plan last year specifically to keep seeing a Brown University Health doctor are now finding that the doctor is gone from the network too. Brown Health’s hospitals left UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage network in July 2025; as of July 1, 2026, the health system’s outpatient physician offices…

The federal government has finalized how much it will pay private Medicare Advantage insurers for next year, and the total is bigger than most of the plans it funds. That increase is landing at the same time several of the country’s largest insurers are pulling Medicare Advantage plans out of counties across the country, shrinking…