The 2027 Medicare Plan Exits Are a Demand Wave for Agents, Not a Market Shrinking Under You

Quick answers:

• What is happening to Medicare Advantage plans in 2027?
• Do members whose Medicare plan is discontinued get a special enrollment period?
• When is the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period for 2027?
• Is it compliant to market to people whose Medicare plan is being discontinued?
• Are the 2027 Medicare plan exits good or bad for insurance agents?

Right now, in the middle of summer, health systems and national carriers are deciding which Medicare plans they will stop offering next year. Some have already announced it. Members will get the letters in the fall. And a lot of agents are reading the same headlines and bracing for a smaller market.

That read is backwards. When a carrier exits or non-renews a plan, the member does not leave Medicare. The member is forced to shop. The letter the carrier sends does the prospecting for you. The only question is whether your marketing is positioned to catch that person before a call center does.

This piece is about the market structure, not the channel tactics. For the AEP campaign mechanics, the lead-buying windows, and the measurement plumbing, the existing playbooks below do that work. This is about reading the 2027 shakeout correctly and pre-positioning for it.

What Is Actually Happening to Medicare Plans in 2027

The 2027 plan year is a churn year. Carriers are pulling out of markets, non-renewing plans, and cutting the extras.

The named exits are already public. Presbyterian Healthcare Services in New Mexico will discontinue most of its Medicare Advantage plans for 2027 and cut about 150 jobs, per Fierce Healthcare. Local reporting put the affected membership at roughly 30,000 patients. In Oregon, Providence is ending most of its health insurance plans for 2027, a move OregonLive reports will force hundreds of thousands of people to find new coverage. On the under-65 side, Cigna is exiting the ACA individual market for 2027, leaving about 369,000 members across 11 states looking for a plan.

None of this is new behavior. The big three already pulled back for 2026. UnitedHealthcare, Humana, and Aetna all reduced the number of states and counties they serve, Healthcare Dive reported. KFF found that the number of enrollees facing plan terminations is increasing in 2026. And the members who keep their plans are not untouched. Reuters reports that plans may cut gym, vision, and dental extras for 2027.

Here is the part that trips people up. CMS finalized an average 2.48% rate increase for Medicare Advantage in 2027, per the American Hospital Association. That is more than $13 billion above 2026, and a big jump from the 0.09% it first proposed. Rates went up, and carriers are still exiting. That tells you the churn is structural. It is about medical costs, risk scores, and star ratings in specific counties, not a single rate number. So do not assume the 2027 pay bump stops the exits next year. The reshuffling is the new baseline.

Why This Is a Demand Wave, Not a Market Shrinking Under You

A plan exit feels like loss. The membership number drops. The county map gets smaller. It reads like contraction.

The enrollment math says otherwise. About 2.6 million Medicare Advantage members were in plans that terminated coverage at the end of 2025, KFF found, which worked out to just under 13% of MA-PD enrollees. Those members did not disappear. KFF reports that 98.9% of them had another Medicare Advantage plan available to move to. The program is still growing. Medicare Advantage now covers 55% of eligible beneficiaries, even with the exits, Forbes reported, though the pace of growth has slowed.

Read those two facts together. Millions of people lose their plan, and almost all of them have somewhere to go. That is not a shrinking market. That is a market being forced to re-shop.

A forced shopper is a different lead than a casual one. They have a deadline. When a plan is non-renewed, the member gets a Special Enrollment Period to switch or return to Original Medicare. In most cases they also get a guaranteed-issue right to buy a Medigap policy with no medical underwriting. The Medicare.gov enrollment rules and California Health Advocates both lay this out. That underwriting waiver is a real selling point you can state plainly. The person has to act, they have a clean path to act, and they are looking for someone to help. That is the demand the exits create.

Who Is Suddenly In-Market

“Displaced Medicare member” is not one audience. The 2027 exits create at least five, and they do not all want the same thing.

• Non-renewed Medicare Advantage members. Their plan is gone for 2027. They have an SEP and, often, guaranteed-issue Medigap. Highest urgency, cleanest message.
• Benefit-cut but retained members. Their plan survives, but the dental, vision, or gym benefit they used is thinner. They are annoyed and curious, not panicked. They will compare.
• Last-carrier-market members. In some places, choice is collapsing the other way. Humana became the only Medicare Advantage carrier in 24 counties across California, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Washington, Modern Healthcare reported. In those counties the question is Original Medicare plus a supplement, not which Advantage plan.
• Displaced under-65 and ACA shoppers. Cigna’s exit alone puts about 369,000 ACA members back in the market. Different product, different funnel, same trigger.
• Guaranteed-issue Medigap buyers. A subset of the non-renewed group can buy Medicare Supplement without underwriting. For an agent, a guaranteed-issue Med Supp sale is a different and often stickier piece of business than an Advantage enrollment.

Build the Marketing Before AEP Opens, Not During It

The displaced-member demand lands on a fixed calendar. Carriers send the Annual Notice of Change and the non-renewal letters in the early fall. The Annual Enrollment Period runs October 15 to December 7 for 2027 coverage. By the time those letters hit mailboxes, ad auctions are crowded and lead prices are at their Q4 peak.

So the work happens now. Summer is when you map which plans are exiting your counties, set up the landing pages and tracking, and warm the audiences you will retarget in October. The team that walks into AEP with a built and tested funnel pays less for the same lead than the team that spins it up in week one.

That is also the difference between this piece and the execution guides. The 12-month AEP buyer playbook covers how to pace lead supply across the year. The three-phase paid-social rebuild covers the Meta and TikTok build. The AEP-versus-OEP bid sheet covers the lead-buying windows. Use them for the how. This is the what and the when: pre-position around the specific plans leaving your market, in summer, while it is cheap.

Win the Search the Carriers’ Own Letters Create

When a member gets a non-renewal letter, the first thing many of them do is search. They type the plan name. They search whether their plan is ending. They look up what to do when a Medicare plan is discontinued. The carrier just generated that intent for free.

Own those searches in your service area. Build pages that answer the exact question a displaced member is asking, name the real options, and route to a fast human response. The page does not need to be clever. It needs to load fast, say the true thing, and make it easy to talk to a licensed agent.

Speed is the whole game on this kind of lead. A person holding a letter that says their coverage is changing wants an answer today, not a callback next week. If a national 1-800 line picks up before you do, the lead is theirs. The same logic that governs any lead funnel applies here, only harder, because the deadline is real. Set the bar at a live licensed agent in under five minutes during business hours, not a next-day callback. Hit that, and you win more of these than your cost per lead would predict. Then make sure your tracking attributes that contact, the way the server-side conversion tracking setup does, so smart bidding optimizes toward real conversations and not junk form-fills.

Market the Displacement Without Getting Shut Off

This is the section that decides whether you are still in business next AEP. Medicare marketing is heavily regulated, and the displacement message is exactly the kind that tempts agents into fear and urgency. That temptation is the trap.

A few hard guardrails, none of which are legal advice, all of which you should confirm with your FMO and against current CMS guidance:

• The TPMO disclaimer is mandatory. If you do not represent every plan in the area, you say so, in the standard CMS language, across TV, radio, online, print, and verbal contact. It lives in 42 CFR Part 422, Subpart V.
• The 48-hour scope-of-appointment wait is gone for 2027. CMS eliminated the requirement to collect a Scope of Appointment 48 hours before a marketing meeting in its CY2027 rule, as agent compliance resources summarize. You still need the SOA. You can now take it at the start of a same-day appointment, which changes how you build your intake. Rebuild the workflow, do not skip the form.
• Call recording and material rules still apply. Recording and retention requirements for sales and enrollment calls have not gone away, and marketing materials still need to follow CMS content rules.

The content line matters most. “Your plan is changing, here are your real options” is true and compliant. “Your plan is being cancelled, act now before you lose your benefits” is fear-based and a fast way to draw an audit. The compliant version of this message is also the more effective one, because the person already knows their plan is changing. They do not need to be scared. They need to be helped. That is the whole brand for an operator who plans to be in this market for more than one season.

Judge It on Enrollments and Persistency, Not Cost Per Lead

A displacement campaign can post a great cost per lead and still lose money. The lead pool is mixed. A non-renewed Advantage member, a guaranteed-issue Med Supp prospect, and a curious benefit-cut shopper convert at different rates and carry different commission and persistency profiles.

So measure the thing that pays. Cost per enrollment, not cost per lead. And track how those enrollments persist, because a member who switched once under pressure may switch again. The persistency-adjusted CPA approach is the right lens here, and the cost-per-enrollment math shows how to attribute it back to the source. A guaranteed-issue Med Supp sale and an Advantage enrollment can come from the same ad and carry completely different lifetime value. If your measurement stops at the lead, you cannot see that, and you will scale the wrong half of the campaign.

Who Should Lean In and Who Should Sit It Out

This opening is not free money, and it is not for everyone.

The agents who win it are appointed with the carriers that are growing in the vacated markets, not the ones leaving. When Humana becomes the last carrier in a county, the displaced members go to Humana, so the agent needs that appointment. They have the compliance infrastructure to run regulated campaigns at volume without cutting corners. And they have a fast response path, because the speed-to-lead bar on a deadline-driven shopper is unforgiving.

If you are not appointed with the carriers absorbing the displaced members in your footprint, the demand is real but it is not yours to catch. The honest move there is to fix the appointments and the response path first, then market into the wave. The exits will still be reshaping this market next year. The structural churn is not a one-season event. The agents who treat it as a recurring demand source, instead of a recurring threat, are the ones who compound through it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is happening to Medicare Advantage plans in 2027?

For the 2027 plan year, several carriers are exiting markets, non-renewing plans, and trimming supplemental benefits. Presbyterian Healthcare Services is discontinuing most of its Medicare Advantage plans, Providence is exiting most of its health insurance business in Oregon, and Cigna is leaving the ACA individual market. KFF reports that about 2.6 million members were in Medicare Advantage plans that terminated at the end of 2025 and that terminations are rising in 2026. At the same time, Medicare Advantage still covers 55% of eligible beneficiaries, so the market is churning, not collapsing.

Do members whose Medicare plan is discontinued get a special enrollment period?

Yes. When a Medicare Advantage plan is non-renewed or terminated for the next plan year, affected members qualify for a Special Enrollment Period. They can use it to switch to another Advantage plan or return to Original Medicare. In most cases they also get a guaranteed-issue right to buy certain Medigap policies without medical underwriting, generally within 63 days of the notice. The exact window and options should be confirmed at Medicare.gov or with a State Health Insurance Assistance Program.

When is the Medicare Annual Enrollment Period for 2027?

The Annual Enrollment Period for 2027 coverage runs from October 15 to December 7, 2026. The Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment Period then runs January 1 to March 31, 2027. Members losing a plan to a non-renewal may also have a separate Special Enrollment Period outside those dates, which is why pre-positioning your marketing in the summer matters.

Is it compliant to market to people whose Medicare plan is being discontinued?

It can be, and it is a legitimate thing to market around, but it has to be done inside the CMS marketing rules. Use the required TPMO disclaimer, follow the current Scope of Appointment rules, meet call recording and material requirements, and avoid fear-based or misleading urgency claims. A factual “your plan is changing, here are your options” message is compliant. A “you are about to lose your coverage, act now” message invites an audit. None of this is legal advice; confirm specifics with your FMO and current CMS guidance.

Are the 2027 Medicare plan exits good or bad for insurance agents?

For prepared agents, they are an opportunity. Plan exits force members to shop, and almost all of those members stay in the market and pick a new plan, which makes them high-intent prospects on a deadline. The agents who benefit are appointed with the carriers gaining ground in their area, can run compliant campaigns at volume, and respond fast. Agents without those pieces will see the demand but struggle to convert it.