Medicare Advantage

Scranton-area Medicare 2027: Plan choices

Scranton-area Medicare 2027: What plan choices look like — plain-language Medicare information for Scranton, Pennsylvania.

SCRANTON, Pa. — As Medicare's 2027 plan year comes into view, many Scranton-area residents are asking a simple question: how many choices will they actually have close to home? Because Medicare plan availability is set county by county, the answer depends less on your ZIP code and more on which county line you sit inside. For Scranton and the surrounding metro, that means looking at Lackawanna County and its neighbors.

How plan availability works around Scranton

Medicare Advantage and Part D options are approved and listed by county, not by city. Scranton sits in Lackawanna County, so a Scranton resident's plan menu is the Lackawanna County menu. A neighbor a few miles away in Luzerne, Wayne, Susquehanna, or Monroe County may see a different lineup — sometimes very different — even though the towns feel like one region.

That's why two friends who both live "near Scranton" can compare notes and find they're being offered different plans. Neither is wrong. They're just shopping in different county markets.

What the plan numbers look like in Lackawanna County

For 2026, Lackawanna County had 75 Medicare Advantage plans available, offered by 9 carriers — a wide field of choices for the roughly 44,410 residents age 65 and older in the county. The 2027 lineup will be reflected in each plan's ANOC and on Medicare.gov's Plan Finder.

The county-level data also shows 0 stand-alone Part D prescription drug plans listed for the area in this dataset. In practice, most Scranton-area residents who want drug coverage get it built into a Medicare Advantage plan (an "MA-PD"). If you're on Original Medicare and want a stand-alone Part D plan, it's worth confirming current options directly on medicare.gov, since the Plan Finder is the official source.

You may also see that 0 contracts in the area carry a Star Rating of 4 or higher in the current data. Star Ratings are CMS's quality scores for plans, updated each year. They're a helpful reference point, but they're one factor among many — network, drug list, and travel coverage often matter just as much for day-to-day use.

Why the county-by-county view matters in a metro area

Northeastern Pennsylvania is stitched together from several counties, and people cross those lines all the time — for work, for family, for doctors, for hospitals. But your Medicare plan choices are tied to the county where you actually live, based on your permanent address.

A few practical points that follow from that:

• If you move from Scranton to a neighboring county, that's a qualifying life event, and you'll get a Special Enrollment Period to pick a plan available where you now live.
• Snowbirds and people who split time between homes should look carefully at how a plan handles out-of-area care.
• Family members helping a parent shop should confirm which county's plan list they're actually looking at.

Key Part D rules to keep in mind

A few program-wide changes apply no matter which county you live in:

• Part D out-of-pocket cap: $2,100 for the year in 2026 and $2,400 in 2027. Once you hit it, you pay nothing for covered drugs the rest of the calendar year.
• Part D deductible: up to $615 in 2026 ($700 in 2027), depending on the plan.
• No more "donut hole": the coverage gap was eliminated in 2025, so Part D now has three phases, not four.
• Medicare Prescription Payment Plan: an optional program that lets you spread your drug costs across monthly payments instead of paying big amounts at the pharmacy counter.
• IRMAA: higher-income enrollees pay extra for Part B and Part D. For a single filer in 2026, the surcharge starts above $109,000 in income.

Important dates

• October 15 – December 7: Annual Enrollment Period. You can join, switch, or drop a Medicare Advantage or Part D plan. Changes take effect January 1.
• January 1 – March 31: Medicare Advantage Open Enrollment. If you're already in a Medicare Advantage plan, you get one chance to switch to another MA plan or return to Original Medicare (and add a Part D plan).