Medicare 2026

Louisville Medicare: your fall 2026 checklist before the Dec. 7 deadline

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Medicare Annual Enrollment Period for 2027 coverage opens Oct. 15, 2026 and closes Dec. 7, 2026. If you live in Louisville and are on Medicare, this is the window to look at your plan one more time before next year's coverage locks in on Jan. 1, 2027.

Nothing automatically disappears if you do nothing. Your current plan, if it is being offered again next year, simply rolls into 2027 with whatever updates are listed in its Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) — the booklet your plan mails in September. The question for this fall is whether that renewal still fits.

What you can actually change between Oct. 15 and Dec. 7

AEP is the broad once-a-year window. During it, you can:

• Join a Medicare Advantage plan (with or without drug coverage) for the first time.
• Switch from one Medicare Advantage plan to another.
• Drop Medicare Advantage and go back to Original Medicare (Parts A and B).
• Join, switch, or drop a stand-alone Medicare Part D drug plan.

If you move from Medicare Advantage back to Original Medicare, you can pair it with a stand-alone Part D plan during this same window. Medigap (Medicare Supplement) is a separate decision with its own rules — AEP is not a guaranteed-issue window for Medigap in Kentucky, so if that is part of your plan, call SHIP before you cancel anything.

Whatever you choose, the new coverage starts Jan. 1, 2027.

When your coverage actually starts

Every change made during AEP has the same effective date: Jan. 1, 2027. You do not need to time your enrollment to the last day — a decision made on Oct. 20 and one made on Dec. 6 both begin the same morning. If you make more than one change during the window, the last choice on file by Dec. 7 is the one that takes effect.

Why reading your ANOC matters this year

The Annual Notice of Change spells out what is different about your plan for 2027 — the premium, the drug list (formulary), the pharmacy and provider network, and the cost-sharing for the services you use. For Jefferson County, CMS data show 13 plans not returning in 2027, 13 new plans, and 9 renamed. "Renamed" can be confusing: the plan may look new in the mail, but the ANOC will say whether it is the same plan under a new label.

A few things you can safely compare year to year, since they are set by Medicare and not by any one plan:

• Part D out-of-pocket cap: $2,100 in 2026, rising to $2,400 in 2027.
• Part D maximum deductible: $615 in 2026, $700 in 2027.
• The coverage gap ("donut hole") is gone as of 2025 — Part D now has three phases.
• The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan lets you spread drug costs across the calendar year in level monthly amounts; you can opt in with your plan.

The 2027 Part B standard premium and deductible, and the 2027 IRMAA income brackets, are published by CMS later in the fall (usually in November). We will update coverage when those come out.

The Louisville picture, in plain numbers

Louisville is in Jefferson County, where CMS lists 67 Medicare Advantage plans for 2026 from 10 carriers: Abilis Health, Aetna (CVS Health), Centene (WellCare), Devoted Health, Elevance Health (Anthem), Essence Healthcare, Humana, Passport Advantage, Provider Partners Health Plans, and UnitedHealthcare. By type, that breaks down to 15 HMOs, 17 HMO-POS plans, and 35 PPOs. Twenty-eight of the 67 are Special Needs Plans (SNPs) — built for people who have Medicaid as well, live in a facility, or have a specific chronic condition like diabetes, heart disease, or chronic kidney disease.

Jefferson County has no stand-alone Part D plans listed in the 2026 Landscape file, so people who want drug coverage alongside Original Medicare should talk with SHIP or use the Plan Finder at medicare.gov to see which stand-alone Part D plans serve this ZIP code for 2027 once that data posts.

The table below lists every Medicare Advantage plan offered in Jefferson County, by carrier.

How to decide, without the pressure

A simple way to work through AEP:

1. Pull out your ANOC and look at the first few pages — that is where the 2027 changes are summarized. 2. Make a short list: your doctors, your pharmacy, and every drug you take with the dose. 3. Check that list against the 2027 plan — are the doctors still in-network, is your pharmacy preferred, is each drug still on the formulary and at what tier? 4. If anything important changed, compare two or three alternatives on medicare.gov's Plan Finder. If you want a human to sit with you, call SHIP. 5. Make your choice by Dec. 7. If you do nothing, your plan renews as described in the ANOC.

Star Ratings, which CMS publishes each fall, are one input — they describe how a contract has performed on quality measures. They are not a ranking of which plan is right for you, and we are not using them to steer you to any plan here.

Where to get local, unbiased help

In Kentucky, the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) offers free one-on-one Medicare counseling. Counselors do not sell plans and are not paid by insurance companies. In the Louisville area, SHIP is coordinated through the Kentucky Department for Aging and Independent Living, with local help often routed through KIPDA (the Kentuckiana Regional Planning and Development Agency). You can reach Kentucky SHIP at 1-877-293-7447.

You can also:

• Visit medicare.gov to compare plans with the Plan Finder.
• Call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227), 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.