Your Medicare Advantage Plan Is Leaving in 2026: What Houston Beneficiaries Do Next

You opened the mailbox at your home in Sharpstown, Pasadena, or Kingwood, and among the September bills was an envelope from your Medicare Advantage plan. Inside, past the plan logo and the polite opening line, was a sentence that made your stomach tighten: your plan will not be offered in your area next year. It might be called a “Plan Non-Renewal Notice,” it might arrive folded into your Annual Notice of Change (ANOC), or it might be a plain plan-termination letter. Whatever it is called, the message is the same — the Medicare Advantage plan you have relied on for your doctor visits, your prescriptions, and your out-of-pocket protection is leaving, and you have to do something about it before a deadline you did not choose.

Take a breath. This is more common than it feels, it is not a mistake or a penalty aimed at you, and — this is the part the letter buries — losing your plan through no fault of your own actually opens up rights you would not otherwise have. You get a protected Special Enrollment Period. You get two clear safety nets to choose between. And, in a window many Houston beneficiaries never hear about, you get a guaranteed-issue right to buy a Medicare Supplement (Medigap) policy without medical underwriting — a door that is normally closed to people who have been on Medicare for years. This guide walks you, step by step, through exactly what the notice means, the deadlines that apply, and how Wise Insurance Agency helps Houston and Harris County beneficiaries turn a stressful letter into a calm, deliberate decision.

1. What a non-renewal, ANOC, or termination notice actually means

Every fall, Medicare Advantage and Part D plans send required mailings that spell out what is changing for the coming year. Most of the time these are routine. But if your plan is leaving your service area, one of these documents will tell you so — and it is worth understanding which is which so you do not miss the signal.

The Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) arrives in September and describes how your existing plan will change for January — premiums, copays, drug tiers, and networks. If your plan is continuing but changing, the ANOC is where you learn it. A Plan Non-Renewal Notice or plan-termination letter is different: it tells you the plan itself will not be available to you next year, because the insurer is pulling it out of your county or ending it entirely. That is the letter that starts the clock in this guide.

Here is how the three notices compare, so you can identify what landed in your mailbox:

If you are still not sure which one you received, that alone is a good reason to have someone read it with you. Our team reviews these letters with Houston clients every fall and can tell you in minutes whether your plan is continuing, changing, or leaving. Start at our Medicare hub or call us directly.

2. How common are 2026 Medicare Advantage plan exits?

It helps to know you are not alone. Nationally, 2026 is a year of real contraction in the Medicare Advantage market. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the average Medicare beneficiary can choose from 32 Medicare Advantage prescription drug (MA-PD) plans in 2026, two fewer than the 34 available in 2025. The two largest insurers, UnitedHealthcare and Humana, are exiting more counties than they are entering, each pulling back to offering plans in roughly 80% of U.S. counties, down from nearly 90% the year before. KFF further estimates that about 13% of MA-PD enrollees — roughly 2.6 million people nationwide — are in a plan being terminated for 2026 and will not be automatically moved into a replacement.

What that means for you in Harris County is simple: a plan leaving is a routine market event this year, not a red flag about your health or your eligibility. The reassuring flip side, also from KFF, is that the overwhelming majority of affected beneficiaries still have other Medicare Advantage options available where they live. The task is not to panic; it is to compare what is left carefully and pick the option that fits your doctors, your prescriptions, and your budget.

3. Your Special Enrollment Period: the exact dates

Here is the single most important thing to understand about a non-renewal: it hands you a protected Special Enrollment Period (SEP) that other beneficiaries do not get. When your plan leaves Medicare or stops serving your area, Medicare.gov states you get an SEP that runs from December 8 through the last day of February to switch to a new Medicare Advantage plan, a new Medicare drug plan, or back to Original Medicare. For the 2026 plan year, that window is December 8, 2025 through February 28, 2026.

That SEP does not replace the two enrollment windows you already have — it sits on top of them. It is easy to blur these together, so here is how the three windows relate:

In plain terms: your strongest first move is to use the Annual Enrollment Period (October 15 – December 7) to choose replacement coverage that starts cleanly on January 1. The non-renewal SEP (December 8 – February 28) is your safety cushion if you miss that, or if you need to change course after the year begins. And the MA Open Enrollment Period gives most beneficiaries one more chance to adjust through March 31. The goal is to have your new coverage locked in before December 31 so there is no day where you are uninsured.

4. Your two safety nets, side by side

When your plan leaves, you are really choosing between two paths. There is no universally “right” one — the right answer depends on your doctors, your prescriptions, your travel, and how much predictability you want. Here are the two nets.

Safety net A: Another Medicare Advantage plan

You can move to a different Medicare Advantage plan offered in your area. This keeps you in the all-in-one structure you are used to: medical, usually drug coverage, and often extras like dental, vision, or a fitness benefit, typically through a network of Houston-area providers. The key homework is confirming that your doctors and hospitals are in the new plan’s network and that your medications are on its formulary at a tier you can afford.

Safety net B: Original Medicare + Part D + Medigap

Alternatively, you can return to Original Medicare (Parts A and B), add a stand-alone Part D prescription drug plan, and — this is the piece that makes this path powerful right now — add a Medicare Supplement (Medigap) policy. Original Medicare lets you see any provider nationwide who accepts Medicare, with no network. A Medigap policy then fills in much of what Original Medicare leaves you to pay, making your costs far more predictable. The catch is that Medigap normally requires you to pass medical underwriting — but as the next section explains, your plan leaving may hand you a rare guaranteed-issue right to skip that.

5. The Medigap guaranteed-issue window you may not know you have

This is the section most beneficiaries never hear about, and it can matter more than anything else in your letter. Normally, if you want to buy a Medicare Supplement policy after your one-time Medigap Open Enrollment (the six months around when you first turned 65 and enrolled in Part B), the insurer can put you through medical underwriting — reviewing your health history and potentially charging you more or turning you down. But federal law grants guaranteed-issue rights in certain situations, and losing Medicare Advantage coverage through no fault of your own is one of them.

Per Medicare.gov, when your Medicare Advantage plan leaves Medicare or stops giving care in your area, you have a guaranteed-issue right to buy certain Medigap policies without medical underwriting. The window runs from 60 days before your coverage ends to 63 days after it ends. Under federal rules, the guaranteed-issue Medigap options in this situation are Plans A, B, C, D, F, G, K, or L — with one important caveat: Plans C and F are only available if you became eligible for Medicare before January 1, 2020. If you became eligible on or after that date, Plan G is generally the most comprehensive guaranteed-issue option available to you.

*Medigap Plans C and F are available only to people who became eligible for Medicare before January 1, 2020.

6. The deadline timeline, month by month

Deadlines are the whole game here. Miss them and your options shrink; hit them and you keep every protection. Here is the sequence for a plan leaving at the end of 2025 for the 2026 plan year.

7. The 2026 cost figures to plan around

Whichever path you choose, a few verified 2026 numbers shape your budget. If you return to Original Medicare, you will pay the standard Part B premium, and your stand-alone Part D drug plan carries its own protections. These are the figures published by CMS and Medicare.gov for the 2026 plan year.

The Part B premium is $202.90 per month for 2026, up from $185.00 in 2025, per the official CMS 2026 Medicare Parts A & B fact sheet. On the drug side, whichever Part D route you take, your out-of-pocket spending on covered drugs is capped at $2,100 for 2026 — once you hit it, covered Part D drugs cost you $0 for the rest of the year, per Medicare.gov. The Part D national base beneficiary premium is $38.99 for 2026, a figure CMS uses in setting Part D premiums and any late-enrollment penalty. If you were on Medicare Advantage with drug coverage and move to Original Medicare, remember you now need a separate Part D plan to keep that drug protection and to avoid a lifelong late-enrollment penalty.

8. What to do next in Houston and Harris County

A non-renewal letter is really an invitation to make a better-informed choice than you might have made on autopilot. The plan you had may not have been the strongest fit anyway; this is your chance to compare what is actually available in Harris County against your real doctors, real prescriptions, and real budget. But the comparison has to happen inside the deadlines, and it has to weigh a lot of moving parts — networks, formularies, tiers, premiums, and whether the Medigap guaranteed-issue door applies to you.

That is exactly the work Wise Insurance Agency does with Houston beneficiaries every fall. We sit down with your letter, confirm which notice you received, check whether your physicians and medications line up with each available plan, and tell you plainly whether Safety Net A or Safety Net B fits your life better — all before the clock runs out. If Medigap guaranteed-issue applies to you, we make sure you use that window rather than lose it. You can start by exploring your Medicare plan options, confirming your Medicare eligibility details, or reaching out through our contact page. You can also email us at sara@wisehealthins.com.

Frequently asked questions

Wise Insurance Agency is a licensed insurance agency in the State of Texas. The information here is general guidance and not a substitute for plan-specific advice. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Any information we provide is limited to those plans we do offer in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or your local State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options. Enrollment windows, guaranteed-issue rights, Medigap plan availability, premiums, formularies, networks, and program rules change and are subject to federal and state action; the dates and figures in this article reflect 2026 plan-year data as published by CMS and Medicare.gov as of the date it was written. Medigap plan availability and rules vary by state. Verify current rules with your plan, with CMS, or with a licensed agent before making any decision.