Eight states sit on opposite sides of CMS’s 2027 Medicare Advantage ledger. Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii and Iowa each have more plans next year than this year, while California, Kansas, Colorado and Idaho each have fewer, according to the state-by-state fact sheets CMS released on September 28, 2026. The gains are small and the losses larger, and all eight pairs of figures come from the same CMS document.
Together the four gaining states add five plans, while the four losing states shed 22. Every number below is a count of plans offered in a state, not a count of enrollees.
The four gainers, ranked by size
Hawaii has the biggest increase of the four. CMS’s landscape fact sheets say 46 Medicare Advantage plans are available there in 2027, compared to 44 in 2026, a rise of two.
- Hawaii: 44 plans in 2026, 46 in 2027, up two.
- Connecticut: 47 plans in 2026, 48 in 2027, up one.
- Delaware: 37 plans in 2026, 38 in 2027, up one.
- Iowa: 63 plans in 2026, 64 in 2027, up one.
The word “each” in the grouping holds in the sense that every one of the four offers more plans, but the gains are not equal: one state adds two and three add one. None of the four moves the other way.
The four decliners, from the steepest fall
The losses are spread over four very different markets. California has the largest raw drop, while Idaho and Kansas lose a bigger share of their fields because those fields are much smaller.
- California: 402 plans in 2026, 394 in 2027, down eight.
- Kansas: 87 plans in 2026, 80 in 2027, down seven.
- Idaho: 48 plans in 2026, 44 in 2027, down four.
- Colorado: 107 plans in 2026, 104 in 2027, down three.
Each line follows the document’s own wording pattern, for example “394 MA plans are available in 2027, compared to 402 plans in 2026” for California and “44 MA plans are available in 2027, compared to 48 plans in 2026” for Idaho. The differences are subtractions of the two stated figures.
Net figures also hide movement underneath. A state shown as down one plan could have dropped three and added two, and the fact sheet totals cannot reveal that. Each of the eight figures is therefore a net change in the number of plans offered, which is the only thing the document reports.
Why size matters when comparing a loss of eight with a loss of four
California’s field is the largest in this set by a wide margin, so a drop of eight leaves 394 plans. Idaho’s drop of four takes it from 48 to 44, a larger share of a smaller field. A bare count of plans removed cannot show that difference, and the fact sheets do not rank states by percentage change.
The same logic applies to the gainers. Connecticut, Delaware and Iowa each add one plan to fields of between 37 and 64, so the change is a small fraction of what was already offered. Hawaii’s two additional plans on a base of 44 are the most notable move on the gaining side, though still modest.
What the national release says about the pattern
The state split sits inside a national total that CMS described as stable. Its announcement of the 2027 landscape reports the number of plans moving from 5,553 in 2026 to approximately 5,532 in 2027, and projects the weighted average monthly Medicare Advantage premium falling from $14.37 to $12.00. CMS describes the Medicare Advantage and Part D programs as expected to remain stable, and gives the Open Enrollment dates as October 15 to December 7, 2026.
That framing and the state figures are consistent. A national count that changes by about 21 plans can still include states that gain a plan and states that lose several, and the eight states here show the mechanism at small scale: five plans added across four states, 22 removed across four others. The release does not explain why individual states moved, and neither do the fact sheets, so the reasons behind any one state’s change are not reported here.
Where the reporting stops
The fact sheet file retrieved for this article ends in the Kentucky section. All eight states above fall at or before that point and were read directly. Louisiana and every state after it in the alphabet were not read, so nothing is said about them, including whether any gained or lost more plans than the states here.
CMS also lists the underlying landscape files for 2027 on its Part D coverage page, under the title “CY2027 Landscape (202609.1),” on a page last modified September 30, 2026. That download is where plan-level detail would sit, since the fact sheet summary lines carry only state totals. Its contents were not opened for this article.
The verified record, then, is eight paired counts from one CMS document dated September 28, 2026: Connecticut 47 to 48, Delaware 37 to 38, Hawaii 44 to 46, Iowa 63 to 64, California 402 to 394, Kansas 87 to 80, Colorado 107 to 104 and Idaho 48 to 44.
Reading a state’s net change against one plan’s own record
A net change of one or two plans in Connecticut or Hawaii, or of several in California or Kansas, is a total for the whole state. A plan that leaves a member’s county, or the Medicare Advantage plan a member joined, can sit behind a number that looks small.
The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit includes Medigap guaranteed-issue rights when a Medicare Advantage plan leaves or a member returns to Original Medicare, with a call script, and a provider call script.
Find out how Medigap guaranteed-issue rights work when a plan leaves →
This piece was written with AI assistance and its eight state figures were matched to the CMS fact sheet text before it ran.
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.
