The federal Medicare agency has put a number on how cheap a Part D drug plan will be to find for 2027. CMS says 93% of non-low-income Medicare beneficiaries will have access to an enhanced Part D plan at less than $6 a month. The figure is a forecast of access built from accepted plan bids, and it describes what will be on the shelf, not what any enrollee is paying.
Part D 2027 plan shopping: The release says nothing about whether a given drug is covered, and The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit includes a prescription-by-plan comparison for that gap.
See which Part D plans cover a specific drug list before December 7 →
What CMS counted in the 93% enhanced Part D figure
The statement sits in the agency’s 2027 landscape release of September 28, 2026: “93% of non-low-income beneficiaries will have access to an enhanced Part D plan at less than $6.” Two limits are built into that sentence. The population is non-low-income beneficiaries, so people who qualify for low-income assistance sit outside the denominator. And the verb is “will have access to,” which measures availability in the market, not enrollment and not a premium actually charged.
The same release gives a companion number for the plainer design. CMS says 88% of non-low-income beneficiaries will have access to a basic Part D plan that is $10.30 or less. Read together, the two lines show that for most of this group, a plan with extra coverage layered on top of the basic benefit is projected to cost less than $6 a month, while the basic design clears a slightly higher bar.
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz is the only official quoted in the release, and his remarks cover Medicare Advantage and Part D together rather than the under-$6 number specifically. The figure itself is CMS’s own, stated as an agency finding from its review of 2027 bids.
The stand-alone Part D average moves less than $1
Against the low-cost plans, the average looks higher. CMS writes that “the total average monthly Part D premium for stand-alone prescription drug plans is projected to increase less than $1, from $35.09 in 2026 to $36 in 2027.” The gap between about $36 and under $6 is the reason the 93% figure draws attention: the cheapest enhanced option sits far below the average stand-alone premium that the same release reports.
An average and an availability share answer different questions. The $36 is a projected mean across stand-alone plans. The 93% counts how many non-low-income beneficiaries can reach at least one plan under a price line. A plan under $6 existing in a region does not mean it is the plan that covers a particular medicine, and nothing in the release says it does.
The $41.33 base beneficiary premium is a different number
A third Part D figure from CMS can be mistaken for the premium itself. In a July 2026 fact sheet on the 2027 national average monthly bid amount, the agency states that “for 2027, the base beneficiary premium will be $41.33.” The same fact sheet puts the 2027 national average monthly bid amount at $296.05. Both are computational benchmarks used in setting Part D payments and premiums, not the monthly premium a typical enrollee will see on a plan.
Three Part D numbers now sit side by side: under $6 for the enhanced plans in the 93% figure, about $36 for the projected stand-alone average, and $41.33 for the base beneficiary premium. Each measures something different, which is why quoting any one of them as “the Part D premium” misleads.
Open Enrollment, 1-800-MEDICARE and Plan Finder
The release states that “Medicare Open Enrollment begins October 15, 2026, and ends December 7, 2026.” That is the window in which a Part D enrollee can change drug plans for 2027. CMS also says beneficiaries can call 1-800-MEDICARE for help comparing plans and costs, and that the Medicare Plan Finder lets them compare Medicare health and drug plans. Both are free federal channels, and no payment or broker is needed to use them.
Because the under-$6 plans are an access figure, reaching one requires an active choice during that window. A drug plan the enrollee already has will not move to a lower-cost design on its own because CMS reports that such plans exist.
Why an access statistic does not settle which Part D plan fits
The 93% figure answers one question, whether a sub-$6 enhanced plan is available to non-low-income beneficiaries, and leaves several unanswered. The release does not say which drugs any of those plans cover, so the real cost for a person taking particular prescriptions depends on a plan’s own drug list, which has to be checked plan by plan. The release also separates enhanced plans from basic plans, with different headline premiums at $6 and $10.30, so the two designs have to be compared on the same drug list rather than on premium alone.
The 93% also leaves out low-income beneficiaries, so it is not a statement about everyone on Part D. And because it comes from accepted 2027 bids, it is a projection that holds only while the plan landscape CMS describes is what actually appears on October 15. The 2027 deductible and out-of-pocket limits are not published in the pages CMS released on this announcement, so the premium is only one line in the total yearly cost.
The official route to compare plans is free and can be done directly: Medicare Plan Finder on Medicare.gov, or 1-800-MEDICARE, between October 15 and December 7, 2026.
Part D drug plan comparison for 2027
This is for Part D enrollees who face a December 7 deadline to compare drug plans and are working from a list of their own prescriptions. The costly gap is that a low monthly premium says nothing about whether a plan covers a particular drug.
The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit includes a prescription-by-plan comparison and a cost calculator spreadsheet that compares plans on cost, drugs and doctors, so a drug list can be checked against each plan before the calendar closes.
Open The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit and its prescription-by-plan comparison →
This article was produced with AI assistance and checked against the primary sources linked above.
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.
