Wyoming will have 8 Medicare Advantage plans to choose from in 2027, down from 14 this year, according to the state fact sheets the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published September 28. Montana drops from 32 plans to 23, and Minnesota from 68 to 53. Together the three states lose 30 plans. Open Enrollment, the yearly window for picking or changing Medicare coverage, opens October 15, so people in these states with Advantage coverage will be choosing from a shorter list than last year.
Medicare Advantage is the private-plan option, run by insurers and paid by Medicare, that many people choose in place of Original Medicare. Anyone in Wyoming, Montana or Minnesota who has one of these plans needs to find out whether it is still sold for 2027 and, if it is not, pick a replacement by December 7. Plans that stay can still change their doctor networks and drug lists, so the check applies to them as well. Coverage chosen in the window starts January 1, 2027.
With Wyoming down from 14 plans to 8, a member whose plan ends has a short list to test against their own doctors and prescriptions. The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit includes a cost calculator spreadsheet that compares plans on cost, drugs and doctors, plus a provider call script.
Compare the plans left in Wyoming, Montana and Minnesota with the Decision Kit’s cost calculator →
Wyoming loses six of its 14 plans
CMS’s Wyoming fact sheet lists 8 Medicare Advantage plans for 2027 against 14 in 2026, a loss of six, or about 43 percent. The sheet counts 133,246 people with Medicare in the state. It does not say how many of them are in Advantage plans, so the number of members who must move is not published there.
The average monthly Advantage premium in Wyoming moves the other way from the plan count. The sheet puts it at $69.23 for 2027, up from $45.91, an increase of $23.32 a month. Fewer plans and a higher average are a hard pairing for people on a fixed income, though the figure is an average across plans and the premium for any one plan can sit well above or below it.
Forbes contributor Bruce Japsen reports that UnitedHealthcare is exiting Wyoming in 2027, even as the insurer’s overall footprint grows by four counties, from 2,787 to 2,791. CMS has not said which insurers account for the six plans that disappeared from the Wyoming sheet, and the sheet itself does not name any.
Montana and Minnesota lose nine and 15
Montana’s sheet shows 32 plans in 2026 and 23 in 2027, a drop of nine, or 28 percent. The state has 272,554 people with Medicare. CMS says 94.80 percent of them will have access to an Advantage plan with a $0 monthly premium, which leaves roughly 5 percent of the state’s Medicare population without one.
One named exit comes from Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). Spokeswoman Erika Callahan said the company “will not offer a Blue branded MA product in Oklahoma, Texas, or Montana” in 2027. The roughly 127,000 members affected are counted across those three states together, and no Montana-only figure was given.
Minnesota falls from 68 plans to 53, a loss of 15, or 22 percent, and its 1,206,148 people with Medicare still have the largest menu of the three states. The average monthly premium there goes down, from $69.11 to $59.40, a decrease of $9.71. Humana is dropping its individual Advantage plans in Minnesota, where Forbes says it had fewer than 10,000 enrollees, and it keeps serving the state through group Medicare and drug plans.
How the three states compare with the national numbers
The three losses sit inside a market that CMS calls stable. In its September 28 announcement, the agency projects that the average Advantage premium nationally falls from $14.37 in 2026 to $12.00 in 2027, while the total number of plans moves only from 5,553 to about 5,532. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said, “CMS is fighting to keep high-quality care options affordable and accessible.”
CMS also says 34 million people, about 47.4 percent of everyone on Medicare, will be in an Advantage plan in 2027, and that roughly eight in 10 members can stay in their current plan at the same or a lower premium. The national totals show how little a 30-plan loss across three states moves the count, and how much it narrows the options for the people who live there.
Finding a plan before December 7
Open Enrollment runs October 15 through December 7. Medicare’s free Plan Finder on Medicare.gov lists the plans sold in a given ZIP code and prices each one against a list of prescriptions. With only 8 plans left in Wyoming, going through every one is a short job, and in Montana and Minnesota the same sweep covers 23 and 53 plans.
The information to gather before sitting down is the same everywhere: each prescription with its dose, the names of doctors and hospitals the person wants to keep, and the preferred pharmacy. A lower premium is only one line of the bill. Deductibles, copayments and drug charges decide what a plan costs over a year, and a doctor outside a plan’s network can erase a premium saving quickly.
CMS’s fact sheets give the 2027 plan counts, 8 in Wyoming, 23 in Montana and 53 in Minnesota, and the same closing date for all three: December 7, 2026. A member whose plan is not on the state’s 2027 list has until then to choose one that is.
Eight plans in Wyoming, 23 in Montana, 53 in Minnesota to sort
Each state’s list is a different checklist, and every plan on it has its own doctor network and drug list. The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit puts a cost calculator spreadsheet that compares plans on cost, drugs and doctors next to a provider call script and the Open Enrollment calendar that runs to December 7. The kit is 55 pages.
Call each remaining plan with the Decision Kit’s provider call script →
This article was prepared with AI assistance from cited public sources and reviewed before publication.
