Medicare Advantage

Stockton Medicare Advantage 2027: the 11 carriers and 28 plans, sorted by insurer

For 2027, Stockton is looking at 39 Medicare Advantage plans: 9 new, 14 gone since 2026, and 30 still here but changed on premium, deductible, plan type or name, 11 of them under a new name. Below, how the lineup shifted in San Joaquin County and what to compare, with no plan ranked or recommended.

If you live in Stockton and you're shopping a Medicare Advantage plan for 2027, here is the full picture: 11 insurance carriers are offering 28 Medicare Advantage plans in San Joaquin County next year, and every one of them includes prescription drug coverage. The table below lists each plan by carrier, with its plan type and drug-coverage status, drawn from the CMS Medicare Advantage Landscape Source File for plan year 2027.

Medicare Advantage availability is set at the county level, so any Stockton resident sees the same lineup as the rest of San Joaquin County. Costs, networks and benefits are not shown here because those details belong on Medicare's Plan Finder and in each plan's own documents — where they can be checked against your own doctors, medications and budget.

What the 2027 Stockton lineup looks like

Of the 28 Medicare Advantage plans available in San Joaquin County for 2027, most are HMOs. HMOs typically ask you to use an in-network group of doctors and hospitals and to get referrals for specialists. HMO-POS plans work like HMOs but let you go out of network for certain services, usually at a higher cost. PPOs give you more freedom to see out-of-network providers, again generally at a higher share of the bill.

Nineteen of the 44 plans are Special Needs Plans. SNPs are built for people who fit a specific category — for example, a chronic condition like diabetes or heart disease (C-SNP), or people who qualify for both Medicare and Medi-Cal (D-SNP). You cannot enroll in an SNP unless you meet its eligibility rules.

The 12 carriers offering plans in the county

In alphabetical order, the carriers with Medicare Advantage plans in San Joaquin County for 2027 are Aetna (CVS Health), Alignment Health Plan, Blue Shield of California, Centene (WellCare), Elevance Health (Anthem), Health Plan of San Joaquin / Mountain Valley Health Plan Advantage D-SNP (HMO), Humana, Imperial Health Plan of California, Kaiser Permanente, SCAN Health Plan and UnitedHealthcare. Central Health Medicare Plan, which offered plans in the county in 2026, is not returning for 2027.

Some carriers offer just one or two plans in the county — for example, Health Plan of San Joaquin / Mountain Valley Health Plan Advantage D-SNP (HMO) has 1 plan, and UnitedHealthcare has 1. Others offer a wider slate: Alignment Health Plan lists 12 plans, and Humana, SCAN Health Plan and Central Health Medicare Plan each list 5. The full plan-by-plan breakdown is in the table below.

Drug coverage is built into every plan on the list

Every one of the 28 Medicare Advantage plans in the county for 2027 is an MA-PD, meaning prescription drug coverage is included. The CMS file also shows 0 stand-alone Part D plans listed for the county — which matters if you were thinking of pairing Original Medicare with a separate drug plan, because that path would need to be checked directly on medicare.gov for your ZIP code.

A few program-level Part D facts that apply no matter which plan you pick in 2027:

• The Part D out-of-pocket cap is $2,100 in 2026 ($2,400 in 2027) for the year.
• The maximum Part D deductible any plan can charge is $615 in 2026 ($700 in 2027).
• The old coverage gap ("donut hole") was eliminated in 2025; Part D now has three phases.
• The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan lets you spread your drug costs across the calendar year in monthly payments instead of paying a big bill at the pharmacy counter.

How to narrow the list to plans that fit you

With 44 plans in front of you, the way to make this manageable is to filter, not to compare everything at once. A few practical steps:

1. Start with your doctors and hospitals. Look up each plan's network on the carrier's site or in Plan Finder before you look at anything else. 2. Enter your prescriptions in Plan Finder. Drug tiers and pharmacy networks vary a lot from plan to plan, even within the same carrier. 3. Decide how much flexibility you need. If you travel or want to see specialists without referrals, PPOs and HMO-POS plans behave differently from standard HMOs. 4. Check whether you qualify for a Special Needs Plan. If you have Medi-Cal or a qualifying chronic condition, an SNP may be an option — but the eligibility rules are strict.

Star Ratings, which CMS publishes each fall, are one more data point you can use on Plan Finder. They rate contracts on quality and member experience; they are not a substitute for checking that your own doctors and drugs are covered.

Dates and deadlines to keep in mind

The Annual Enrollment Period runs Oct. 15 through Dec. 7. Changes you make during that window take effect Jan. 1. If you're already in a Medicare Advantage plan on Jan. 1, you get a second window — Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment, Jan. 1 through March 31 — to switch to a different Advantage plan or go back to Original Medicare (with or without a stand-alone drug plan, when one is available for your area).

Higher-income beneficiaries should also know about IRMAA, the income-related surcharge on Part B and Part D premiums. For 2026, IRMAA begins above $109,000 in income for a single filer, based on your tax return from two years earlier.

Where to check the details for each plan

This page shows what is available; it does not show what each plan costs you personally. For that, two official resources will give you accurate, plan-specific answers:

• Medicare Plan Finder at medicare.gov lets you enter your ZIP code, doctors and prescriptions and see costs for each plan.
• 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227), 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• California's State Health Insurance Assistance Program (HIAP/SHIP) offers free, unbiased counseling. You can reach California HIAP at 1-800-434-0222.