Medicare Advantage shoppers in Illinois will choose among 136 plans for 2027, down from 157 this year, while Alabama and Arizona each gain 15 plans, according to the state-by-state fact sheets CMS published with its 2027 landscape on September 28, 2026. The Illinois drop of 21 plans is the largest decline among the eleven states whose figures could be read in the document.
The same fact sheets put Alabama at 113 plans, up from 98, and Arizona at 148, up from 133. Open Enrollment, the period when people with Medicare can join, drop or switch plans, runs October 15 to December 7.
Illinois: 157 plans this year, 136 next year
CMS’s 2027 landscape fact sheets give each state a one-line comparison, and the Illinois line reads: “136 MA plans are available in 2027, compared to 157 plans in 2026.” That is 21 fewer plans offered in the state, the arithmetic being the document’s two figures subtracted.
The figure counts plans offered in Illinois as a whole. It is not a count of enrollees, and it does not say which insurers or plan types account for the 21, or in which counties a plan is no longer sold. A state total can fall because a plan was withdrawn everywhere, because two plans were merged, or because a plan left some counties and stayed in others. The fact sheet text does not separate those cases, so none is asserted here.
Illinois still ends with 136 plans, a large field by the standard of the other states in the document. The decline is the headline because of its size next to the other readable states, not because the state is left with few options.
Alabama at 113 and Arizona at 148
The two gainers moved by the same amount from different bases. Alabama’s fact sheet line reads “113 MA plans are available in 2027, compared to 98 plans in 2026,” and Arizona’s reads “148 MA plans are available in 2027, compared to 133 plans in 2026.” Each is a 15-plan increase, and Arizona’s 2027 total is 35 plans larger than Alabama’s.
Among the eleven states read for this article, Alabama and Arizona are the only two where the count rises by more than two. Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii and Iowa also rose, but by one or two plans each, while California, Colorado, Idaho and Kansas fell as Illinois did. The three states reported here therefore sit at the two ends of the range: the biggest fall and the two biggest rises.
A national total that barely moved
The state swings sit inside a nearly flat national picture. In its September 28 announcement, CMS said the number of plans was changing from 5,553 in 2026 to approximately 5,532 in 2027. The agency also reported that the weighted average monthly premium for Medicare Advantage plans was projected to fall from $14.37 to $12.00.
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz framed the release around stability. “CMS is fighting to keep high-quality care options affordable and accessible for millions of beneficiaries who rely on Medicare Advantage and Part D plans,” he said in the announcement.
The national figures in the announcement are not broken down by state, which is the gap the fact sheets fill. A national total that moves by roughly 21 plans out of more than 5,500 can coexist with a state like Illinois shedding 21 on its own, because gains and losses elsewhere offset one another. The fact sheets are the place in the sources read here where the state-level pairs appear side by side.
The document stops partway through Kentucky
The fact sheet file as retrieved for this article ends in the Kentucky section. Illinois, Alabama and Arizona all come before that point alphabetically, so their figures were read in full. States later in the alphabet, which include several of the largest Medicare Advantage markets, were not read, and no count is reported or implied for them. Whether any of them lost more than Illinois cannot be said from the material available.
That limit also governs the superlative above. Illinois’s 21-plan drop is the biggest among the eleven states read, not a national ranking.
What the December 7 date governs
The Open Enrollment window matters because it is when plan counts turn into individual decisions. According to Medicare.gov, people can join, drop or switch to another Medicare Advantage plan with or without drug coverage during the period, move between Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage in either direction, and join or switch a drug plan if they are in Original Medicare. Coverage begins January 1 of the next year, provided the plan receives the request by December 7.
A state-level count says nothing about what any one person’s current plan will do. Changes that apply to an individual, such as a plan leaving a county or altering its network or drug list, arrive in that plan’s own notices, which the sources read here do not describe. What the landscape shows is the size of the field: 136 plans in Illinois, 113 in Alabama and 148 in Arizona for 2027, set against 157, 98 and 133 a year earlier, as CMS reported on September 28, 2026.
Illinois’s smaller field and the December 7 close of Open Enrollment
A state total of 136 plans in Illinois, or 113 in Alabama, does not say which plans are still sold in a given county or how the remaining ones compare on cost, drugs and doctors. Those differences shape a full year of coverage, and the CMS state fact sheets do not carry them.
The 2027 Medicare Open Enrollment Decision Kit includes a cost calculator spreadsheet that compares plans on cost, drugs and doctors, and the Open Enrollment calendar.
See the cost calculator and the calendar that run to December 7 →
Drafted with AI assistance, then checked line by line against the CMS fact sheets and announcement cited 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.
