Medicare Advantage

Miami Medicare check-up: your ANOC review list before the Dec. 7 deadline

For 2027, Miami is looking at 101 Medicare Advantage plans: 16 new, 30 gone since 2026, and 61 still here but changed on premium, deductible, plan type or name, 20 of them under a new name. Below, how the lineup shifted in Miami-Dade County and what to compare, with no plan ranked or recommended.

MIAMI — It is fall 2026, and the envelope that matters most for your 2027 Medicare coverage has probably already landed in your mailbox. It is called the Annual Notice of Change, or ANOC, and every Medicare Advantage and Part D plan is required to send one each September. It tells you exactly what will be different about your plan on January 1, 2027 — the premium, the drug list, the network, the copays, the extras.

You have until December 7, 2026 to switch, drop or add a plan for coverage that begins January 1, 2027. If you do nothing, your current plan simply renews with the changes described in that ANOC.

Miami is in Miami-Dade County, where — for the 2026 plan year — Medicare beneficiaries can choose from 115 Medicare Advantage plans offered by 17 carriers, according to the CMS Medicare Advantage Landscape Source File. CMS releases the 2027 landscape in the fall, and the full 2027 roster will appear in the table below once it is published.

Start with the ANOC — six things to compare

Pull out last year's plan documents and the new ANOC side by side. These are the six lines that most often change:

1. Monthly premium. Is it going up, down, or staying the same? 2. Medical deductible and copays. Look at primary care, specialist, urgent care, and hospital stays. 3. Drug tiers and pharmacy costs. A drug can move to a higher tier even if the list price does not change. 4. The provider network. Your doctor or hospital may be in-network this year and not next. 5. Extra benefits. Dental, vision, hearing, transportation, over-the-counter and grocery allowances can be added, trimmed or changed. 6. The service area. Rarely, a plan leaves a county. The ANOC will tell you if yours is.

If any of those six lines matters to you and changes for 2027, that is your signal to shop, not to panic.

Check your doctors and hospitals for 2027

Miami-Dade has a large hospital and physician footprint — Jackson Health System, Baptist Health South Florida, the University of Miami Health System, HCA Florida hospitals, Mount Sinai Medical Center and others. Networks are set plan by plan and can change on January 1.

Two steps that take about ten minutes:

• Call your doctor's billing office and ask, in plain terms, "Are you contracted with [plan name] for 2027?" Ask about the specific plan, not just the carrier.
• Look up each provider in the plan's 2027 online directory (plans post them once the new year's contracts are set). Screenshot what you find.

If you have an HMO, an out-of-network specialist generally is not covered except for emergencies. PPOs give more flexibility but usually cost more out-of-network. Miami-Dade's 2026 lineup skewed heavily toward HMO (85 HMO plans, 21 PPO, 9 HMO-POS), so network checks matter here.

Check every prescription against next year's drug list

Every Part D and Medicare Advantage plan with drug coverage publishes a formulary — its list of covered drugs and the tier each one sits on. Formularies are updated every year.

For each medication you take:

• Confirm it is still on the 2027 formulary.
• Note the new tier and whether prior authorization, step therapy or a quantity limit applies.
• Check whether your preferred pharmacy is still a "preferred" pharmacy for 2027 — the cost can be different at a standard in-network pharmacy.

Two program-level numbers to keep in mind for 2027: the Part D out-of-pocket cap rises to $2,400 (up from $2,100 in 2026), and the maximum Part D deductible is $700 (up from $615 in 2026). Individual plan deductibles can be lower than the maximum. The Medicare Prescription Payment Plan remains available if you want to spread drug costs across the year in monthly installments instead of paying at the pharmacy counter.

Know your Miami-Dade options

You are not limited to your current plan. In 2026, Miami-Dade offered plans from Aetna (CVS Health), Align Senior Care, AmeriHealth Caritas VIP Care, Blue Cross Blue Shield (HCSC), Centene (WellCare), Devoted Health, Doctors HealthCare Plans, Elevance Health (Anthem), Florida Blue, Florida Blue HMO, Florida Complete Care, Gold Kidney Health Plan, Humana, Leon Health, Longevity Health Plan, Solis Health Plans and UnitedHealthcare. Of the 115 Medicare Advantage plans in the county, 69 were Special Needs Plans — designed for people with Medicaid (D-SNPs), certain chronic conditions (C-SNPs), or who live in a nursing facility (I-SNPs).

The full 2027 roster for Miami-Dade appears in the table below.

Use the Medicare Plan Finder — and free local help

The official comparison tool is at medicare.gov/plan-compare. If you enter your ZIP code, your drugs and your preferred pharmacy, it will show you what each 2027 plan would look like for your specific situation.

Free, unbiased help is available:

• SHINE is Florida's State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP). Call the Elder Helpline at 1-800-963-5337 to reach a trained volunteer counselor who can sit with you and go through options. It is not a sales operation.
• 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) is open 24/7.
• medicare.gov for enrollment, plan details and your personal Medicare account.

A note on figures still to come: the 2027 Part B standard premium and deductible and the 2027 IRMAA income brackets have not been published yet. CMS typically announces those in November. Watch for them before you finalize a decision, especially if your income is near an IRMAA threshold.