Medicare 2027: Florida Plans Are Changing. Check Yours.

Most people with Medicare will do nothing between now and December 7. Their plan will auto-renew. They will find out in February what changed.

Do not be most people. This year in particular.

Open enrollment runs October 15, 2026 through December 7, 2026, with changes effective January 1, 2027.

Here is what is actually moving.

The headline number, and why it is misleading

CMS announced that the average monthly Medicare Advantage premium will fall from $14.37 in 2026 to about $12 in 2027, a decline of roughly 16 percent. For Medicare Advantage plans that include drug coverage, the average Part D portion is projected to fall from $11.32 to about $7.

CMS also reports that more than 99 percent of beneficiaries will have access to at least one Medicare Advantage plan, 97 percent will have access to ten or more, and about eight in ten current members can keep their plan at the same or a lower premium.

That sounds like good news, and for many people it is. But an average is not a plan. Your premium depends on your carrier, your county and your selections.

And the averages are hiding something specific to us.

The Florida detail

Reporting on the CMS landscape data notes that Florida, along with Ohio and Illinois, is losing dozens of Medicare Advantage plan options for 2027.

An insurer leaving a county is not a premium change. It is your plan ceasing to exist. If that happens to you, you receive a non-renewal notice and you get a special enrollment period, but the default outcome if you ignore the mail is bad.

The stand-alone Part D situation is the real story

This is the part that will catch people.

A temporary federal program, the Part D Premium Stabilization Demonstration, has been holding stand-alone drug plan premiums down. It is scheduled to end in 2027. The subsidies reduced stand-alone premiums by roughly $16 in 2026.

Consequently, analysts report that stand-alone Part D coverage will be harder to find and more expensive for millions of people in 2027, with average stand-alone premiums rising to roughly $36 a month. And critically: there will be no zero-premium stand-alone Part D plans available in 2027 for people not enrolled in the Extra Help program.

If you are on Original Medicare with a stand-alone drug plan, that last sentence is about you. Read your Annual Notice of Change. It arrived in September.

The decision this actually forces

Medicare Advantage versus Original Medicare plus a supplement is the real question underneath all of this, and the honest answer is that it depends on facts about your life, not on which one is better.

Medicare Advantage tends to favor you if: you are relatively healthy, you value a predictable low premium and bundled extras, your physicians are in network, and you do not travel extensively or spend months out of state.

Original Medicare plus Medigap tends to favor you if: you have complex or chronic conditions, you want to see any provider accepting Medicare without network restriction or prior authorization, you split time between Florida and another state, or you want a specialist referral pathway with fewer gates.

One critical warning that costs people badly and is rarely said plainly: Medigap medical underwriting rules mean that switching from Medicare Advantage back to Original Medicare with a supplement later in life is not always straightforward. Depending on your circumstances and timing, you may be subject to underwriting. This is a one-way door for some people. Understand the rules for your situation before you assume you can reverse the decision.

What to do in the next three weeks

Find your Annual Notice of Change. It came in September. It states exactly what is changing. Most people throw it away.

List your medications with dosages. Then run them through the Medicare Plan Finder at Medicare.gov. Formularies change annually and a tier change on one drug can cost more than the entire premium difference.

Confirm your physicians for 2027, not 2026. Networks are set annually. Ask the practice directly rather than trusting a plan directory, which is often stale.

Use SHINE. Florida's SHINE program provides free, unbiased volunteer Medicare counseling through the Department of Elder Affairs and local Area Agencies on Aging. It is not a sales operation. It has no product to sell you.

That last point deserves emphasis. During open enrollment, Treasure Coast and Okeechobee seniors receive an extraordinary volume of marketing: calls, mailers, television. Some of it is legitimate. Some of it is a commissioned agent who can only sell you what they are appointed to sell.

A SHINE counselor is not compensated on your selection. Start there.

The principle

Doing nothing is not neutral. It is choosing next year's version of a plan you selected under last year's conditions.

Ninety minutes with your medication list and the Plan Finder is the highest hourly-rate work most retirees will do all year.

December 7. Put it on the calendar.

Three things before December 7: find your Annual Notice of Change, run your medication list through the Plan Finder, and book a free SHINE counseling session. Ninety minutes, no sales call.

Sources notes:

• Enrollment dates: [FACT] [R14][R16]

• $14.37 to $12, $11.32 to $7, 99/97/80 percent access figures: [FACT] CMS announcement [R14][R15]

• Florida plan losses: [FACT] as reported from CMS landscape analysis, with VA instruction to confirm county-level counts [R15]

• Premium Stabilization Demonstration ending, $16 subsidy, ~$36 average, no $0 stand-alone plans: [FACT] [R15][R65ref]

• Medigap underwriting: [FACT] directional, flagged for state-specific verification

• MA vs Original comparison: framed as decision criteria, not a recommendation