Medicare Advantage

Does Your 2027 ANOC Still Fit Your Long Beach Care?

For 2027, Long Beach is looking at 124 Medicare Advantage plans: 26 new, 23 gone since 2026, and 61 still here but changed on premium, deductible, plan type or name, 23 of them under a new name. Below, how the lineup shifted in Los Angeles County and what to compare, with no plan ranked or recommended.

LONG BEACH, Calif. — The mail has started arriving. If you have a Medicare Advantage or Part D plan, your carrier sent an Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) in late September explaining what will be different about your coverage on January 1, 2027. The Annual Enrollment Period runs now through Dec. 7, 2026, and this is the stretch when a short, honest review of next year's plan is worth the time.

Long Beach sits inside Los Angeles County, which has one of the busiest Medicare markets in the country. That is good news — there are choices — and it is also why a careful read of your own ANOC matters more than scanning a list of plans you do not have.

Start with your ANOC, not with ads

The Annual Notice of Change is the document your current plan is required to send every fall. It is a side-by-side of what your plan looks like this year and what it will look like next year: premium, deductible, copays for primary care and specialists, hospital cost-sharing, drug tiers, and extra benefits like dental, vision or over-the-counter allowances.

Read it with a pen. Circle anything that changed. If your plan is being discontinued for 2027, the ANOC will say so plainly — and that is the one case where doing nothing is a problem, because you would be left with Original Medicare and no drug coverage on Jan. 1.

If nothing in the ANOC bothers you, you do not have to do anything. Your plan renews automatically.

Check your doctors and hospitals for 2027

Networks shift. A medical group that was in-network in 2026 may not be in 2027, and the opposite is true too. Before Dec. 7, do three things:

1. Call your primary care doctor's office and ask which Medicare Advantage plans they will accept in 2027. 2. Do the same for any specialist you see regularly. 3. If you have a preferred hospital — Long Beach Memorial, MemorialCare Miller Children's & Women's, St. Mary, Lakewood Regional, or a facility you drive to in the broader L.A. area — confirm it is in your 2027 plan's network.

Insurers also publish online provider directories. Those are useful, but a phone call to the office is more reliable because contracts can be in motion right up to year-end.

Run your prescriptions through the 2027 formulary

Drug lists (formularies) change every year. A medication can move to a higher tier, require prior authorization, or come off the list. The cleanest way to check is the Medicare Plan Finder at medicare.gov: enter your drugs and your pharmacy, and it will show your estimated full-year drug costs under each plan available in your ZIP code.

Two 2027 numbers to keep in mind as you look: Part D plans can charge a deductible of up to $700 in 2027 (it was $615 in 2026), and the annual out-of-pocket cap for Part D drugs is $2,400 in 2027 (up from $2,100 in 2026). If your drug spending is high, the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan lets you spread those costs across the calendar year instead of paying a large amount in one month.

Know what the Long Beach area offers

Plan availability is set at the county level. Long Beach is in Los Angeles County, where CMS data shows 21 Medicare Advantage carriers offering 121 plans for 2026, including 47 Special Needs Plans for people with specific conditions, dual Medicare-Medi-Cal eligibility, or institutional needs. All of them include drug coverage. The county's carriers include Aetna (CVS Health), AHF, Align Senior Care, Alignment Health Plan, Astiva Health, Blue Shield of California, Centene (WellCare), Central Health Medicare Plan, Champion Health Plan, Clever Care Health Plan, Elevance Health (Anthem), Elite Health Plan, Humana, Imperial Health Plan of California, Kaiser Permanente, L.A. Care Health Plan, Molina Healthcare of California, SCAN Health Plan, UCLA Health Medicare Advantage Plan, UnitedHealthcare and VillageHealth. The table below lists every plan on offer.

You do not need to compare 121 plans. You need to compare the ones that cover your doctors, your drugs and your preferred hospital.

A few 2027 figures are still coming

CMS has confirmed the Part D numbers above. The 2027 Part B standard premium and deductible, and the 2027 IRMAA income brackets that affect higher-income beneficiaries, are usually announced by CMS in November. Those are worth watching if you are near an income threshold or on a fixed budget, but they do not change the Dec. 7 deadline for Medicare Advantage and Part D decisions.

Your Long Beach checklist, in order

• Read your ANOC (arrived in September). Note changes to premium, copays, drug tiers and extra benefits.
• Confirm your doctors and hospital are in the 2027 network — by phone.
• Enter your prescriptions and pharmacy into the Medicare Plan Finder at medicare.gov.
• Decide: stay (do nothing) or switch (enroll by Dec. 7, 2026).
• If you enroll in a Medicare Advantage plan and change your mind, the Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment Period from Jan. 1 to March 31, 2027, lets you switch once or return to Original Medicare.