Medicare Open Enrollment 2027: Dates, Deadlines and What to Actually Do

What you can change during AEP

This window is genuinely broad. Within it you can:

• Join a Medicare Advantage plan, switch to a different one, or drop it and return to Original Medicare
• Join a Part D prescription drug plan, switch to a different one, or drop it entirely
• Move from Original Medicare to Medicare Advantage, or the other way around

What AEP does not cover — and this is the expensive one

Medigap is not part of Annual Enrollment. People assume the October window lets them pick up a Medigap policy the same way it lets them pick up a drug plan, and it does not.

Medigap has its own separate six-month open enrollment window that starts the month you are both 65 or older and enrolled in Part B. During those six months an insurer must sell to you regardless of your health. Outside them, in most states — Wyoming and Utah included — a Medigap insurer can ask health questions and decline you outright.

That asymmetry is why dropping a Medicare Advantage plan can be a one-way door. Leaving Advantage for Original Medicare is easy during AEP. Getting a Medigap policy to sit alongside that Original Medicare may not be, if your health has changed since you turned 65. Check whether you can get the Medigap policy *before* you drop the Advantage plan, not after.

The 2027 numbers nobody has yet

CMS publishes the 2027 Part B premium, the Part A and B deductibles and the IRMAA income brackets in the fall, typically in November. Medicare Advantage and Part D plans are not permitted to market their 2027 benefits before October 1, 2026.

So if a website is quoting you a 2027 premium today, it is guessing. We would rather tell you the figure does not exist yet than invent one. Every dollar amount on this site is a verified current-year number until the real 2027 releases land.

What happens if you do nothing

You do not lose coverage. In almost every case you are rolled into the same plan for the next year — which is exactly why people skip the window.

The problem is that the plan does not stay the same. Premiums move, drug formularies get reshuffled, tiers change, and networks drop providers. Your plan mails you an Annual Notice of Change each September listing precisely what is different, and that letter is the single most useful piece of mail you get all year. Our guide to reading the Annual Notice of Change walks through the four things worth checking.

The specific failure to avoid: a drug you take moves up a tier, or off the formulary entirely, and you find out at the pharmacy counter in February when the price has tripled.

Doing it yourself

You do not need an agent for any of this. Medicare's own Plan Finder at medicare.gov/plan-compare lists every plan available in your ZIP code — including plans no agent is appointed to sell — and lets you enter your actual prescriptions and preferred pharmacy to see estimated annual totals rather than headline premiums.

1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) is staffed around the clock during the window. Your State Health Insurance Assistance Program gives free one-on-one counseling and sells nothing at all.

The same plan costs the same amount whether you enroll through an agent, through Medicare directly, or on your own — carriers set the premiums, and using an agent does not add to them. If you would rather work through it yourself, our enroll yourself guide covers the whole process, and the 2027 enrollment calendar has every date in one place.