Centene Corporation’s Wellcare Medicare Advantage business will exit Oklahoma, Tennessee and Hawaii for the 2027 plan year, eliminating 133 plans across 158 counties. The disclosure came out of the insurer’s second-quarter 2026 earnings call and puts roughly 340,000 members in those three states on notice that their current coverage will end this December. It is one of the largest single moves in a wave of Medicare Advantage cutbacks insurers are already lining up for next year.
A Third Straight Year Of Wellcare Trimming Its Map
Modern Healthcare, which first reported the scope of the exit after Centene’s earnings call, described the move as affecting all three of Centene’s Wellcare Medicare Advantage contracts in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Hawaii. Wellcare, the national brand Centene uses for its Medicare business, still offers Medicare Advantage plans in 32 states and serves roughly 980,000 Medicare Advantage members along with 8.8 million standalone Medicare prescription drug plan members, according to the company’s own product page. Losing the Oklahoma, Tennessee and Hawaii business would shrink that Medicare Advantage membership by more than a third once the exits take effect.
This is not Wellcare’s first retreat. The company pulled its Medicare Advantage plans out of Alabama, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Vermont for the 2025 plan year, a move that affected about 37,300 members, or roughly 3% of the company’s Medicare Advantage enrollment at the time. The 2027 round is far larger in scope even though it covers half as many states, because Oklahoma, Tennessee and Hawaii together carry a much bigger share of Wellcare’s book than the six smaller markets it left two years earlier. Centene leadership has said the company is narrowing its Medicare footprint to states where it also runs a large Medicaid business, rather than holding onto markets where the Medicare Advantage math no longer works.
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Why Insurers Keep Cutting Medicare Advantage Counties
The Centene exits land the same year the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized a 2.48% average payment increase to Medicare Advantage plans, worth more than $13 billion industrywide, according to the agency’s 2027 rate announcement. That final number is well above the 0.09% increase CMS had floated earlier in the year, but insurers have spent months arguing that even the higher figure trails the pace at which medical claims, outpatient procedures and prescription drug costs are climbing. The same rate announcement also confirmed CMS would not adopt an updated Medicare Advantage risk-adjustment model it had proposed for 2027, a decision insurers had lobbied for because it avoided an additional cut to their payments while they still work through an earlier round of risk-model changes.
Centene is not alone in pulling back. Humana, UnitedHealthcare and Molina have each announced their own reductions to next year’s Medicare Advantage business, part of what health policy analysts tracking the industry describe as a fourth consecutive year of retrenchment following the aggressive county-by-county expansion Medicare Advantage plans pursued earlier in the decade. Some carriers are choosing a narrower path than a full county exit, instead trimming supplemental extras like dental or transportation benefits, tightening provider networks, or simply refusing to pay agents commissions for signing up new members in a county the insurer no longer wants to grow.
How Affected Members Switch Plans For 2027
Members enrolled in one of the terminated Wellcare plans can pick a different Medicare Advantage plan, a standalone Part D drug plan, or move to Original Medicare during the annual Medicare Open Enrollment Period, which runs from October 15 through December 7. Anyone who misses that window is not out of options: Medicare’s rules give people whose plan is not renewed a dedicated Special Enrollment Period running from December 8 through the last day of February, according to Medicare.gov’s enrollment rules.
Members who take no action at all are not left uninsured. They are automatically returned to Original Medicare once their old plan’s contract ends on December 31. But Original Medicare does not include the extra benefits many Medicare Advantage plans bundle in, such as dental, vision or hearing coverage, and it carries no built-in drug benefit, so anyone defaulted into Original Medicare would still need to separately enroll in a Part D plan to avoid a late-enrollment penalty later on.
What The Exits Mean For Local Provider Networks
A plan exit does not just change a member’s insurance card. When 158 counties lose a set of Medicare Advantage contracts at once, the hospitals, specialists and pharmacies that built referral relationships and staffing around those plans also have to adjust, and displaced members often discover that a plan they switch to has a narrower network of doctors than the one they are leaving. Rural counties are typically hit hardest, since they tend to have fewer competing Medicare Advantage plans to begin with, which can leave some members choosing between a plan with a different network or Original Medicare paired with a separate drug plan.
Oklahoma, Tennessee and Hawaii regulators have not indicated any plan to intervene in Centene’s decision, since insurers are free to decline to renew a Medicare Advantage contract with CMS for a coming plan year. Members can start comparing what other Medicare Advantage plans, if any, are available in their county well before the fall enrollment window opens, using Medicare’s plan comparison tool or by contacting their State Health Insurance Assistance Program for free, unbiased counseling.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
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David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
