Is Aetna leaving Medicare Advantage in Arizona for 2027?

No. Aetna is selling Medicare Advantage in Arizona for 2027, but a smaller and more HMO-shaped version of it. In Maricopa County, five Aetna general plans continue or arrive against eight sold this year; four 2026 plans end, including the 4.5-star Aetna Medicare Elite (PPO); and Aetna has no general plan in Coconino, Yavapai or Mohave counties next year. Nationally it goes from 43 states to 41. If your letter is dated October 2, your plan ends December 31 and you have three doors and three dates.

I am writing this for north Peoria specifically, because that is where the question has been coming from. The 85383 corridor and Vistancia hold a lot of households who arrived in the last few years from a state where a PPO is the normal shape of a health plan, looked at the Maricopa menu on arrival, and chose an Aetna PPO because it felt familiar. A fair number of them are holding the Elite PPO’s non-renewal letter this week, and the first thing they ask is whether Aetna is leaving. It is not. The second thing they ask is whether “the other Aetna plan” is the answer, and that is the part worth slowing down on.

What Aetna said about 2027

Two statements matter, and neither is Arizona-specific.

On October 1, Healthcare Dive reported that both UnitedHealthcare and Aetna will offer more Medicare Advantage plans with narrower provider networks for 2027. UnitedHealthcare’s president put it as “we can’t ignore the realities facing the healthcare system,” citing funding pressure and rising use of care, and said 66 percent of its members will have access to both an HMO and a PPO next year, down from 70 percent. Aetna, the report said, will sell in 41 states against 43 this year, and analysts estimated about 950,000 members are in Aetna plans that end or in areas it leaves.

On October 3, Aetna’s own 2027 announcement confirmed the shape: plans in 41 states plus Washington, D.C., a “renewed focus to HMO products,” and an expansion of its Prime HMO “in select markets.” That last phrase is the one that explains the Maricopa table below. Aetna is not pulling out of Arizona; it is trimming PPO exposure and rebuilding around an HMO.

None of this is a judgment on the plans. A carrier narrowing its networks is a business decision made across the whole country, and the members on the ended plans did nothing wrong. It simply means the question for 2027 is a network question before it is anything else.

Plan by plan: Aetna in Maricopa County, 2026 against 2027

This comes from the CMS landscape files for the two years, matched by contract and plan number. Premiums and caps are the plan’s own, not Medicare-wide figures. The 2026 Star Ratings shown are the ones in force now; CMS publishes the 2027 ratings this month and they are blank in the file until it does.

Source: CMS CY2026 and CY2027 Medicare Advantage / Part D Landscape files, Maricopa County rows, matched by Contract Plan ID. Caps are in-network maximum out-of-pocket amounts. Stars are 2026 Overall Star Ratings; 2027 ratings publish in October.

Three things to read off that table.

The ended plans were the lower-cap ones. Elite at $5,000, Prime at $4,150, Prime Extra at $3,300, Signature Extra at $4,900. What continues sits at $5,500 to $7,150, with the new Prime HMO at $3,000 the one exception. A household that chose Aetna for a low in-network cap should compare caps before names.

The Elite PPO was the highest-rated of the four ended plans, at 4.5 stars. A star rating measures the contract’s performance on CMS’s quality and member-experience measures across all its plans, not the quality of care any one doctor delivers, and the two Aetna PPOs that continue sit on the same 4.5-star contract, H5521. The star is not what you lose. The $5,000 cap and the specific network are.

The new Prime is a different contract. H8332 did not exist in Arizona in 2026. Whether Aetna moves H4835-001 members across automatically or asks them to enroll is what the October 2 letter says, and the letter is the only authority on it. Treat the new Prime’s 2027 network as a stranger’s: the name carried over, nothing else is guaranteed to.

Where Aetna left Arizona

In 2026 Aetna sold at least one general Medicare Advantage plan in six Arizona counties: Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Coconino, Yavapai and Mohave. For 2027 it is three: Maricopa, Pima and Pinal.

For a Peoria household that is a second-home question, not a first-home one. If you spend summers in Prescott or Flagstaff and chose a plan partly because the same carrier was sold up there, the county you summer in now has fewer carriers than it did, and an Aetna plan bought in Maricopa was never a Yavapai or Coconino plan anyway — the plan is tied to the county of your permanent address, and routine care out of county runs on whatever the plan’s out-of-network rules allow. Which Arizona plans are ending for 2027 has the rural table, with Coconino down from six organizations to three and Yavapai from five to three.

If you were on Aetna Medicare Elite in Peoria

The Elite PPO is the plan I am hearing about most, so take it as the worked example. You have the usual three doors, and in Peoria the first door has a particular order of checking.

Door one, another PPO. Aetna keeps two PPOs with drug coverage in Maricopa County — Signature at $0 with a $7,150 cap and Value Care at $16.80 with a $5,900 cap — and the county as a whole lists eleven PPOs with drug coverage from four carriers for 2027. So the PPO-to-PPO move exists, and for someone who wanted a PPO to see a specialist without a referral, it may well be the right door. But check it in this order, because north Peoria care runs across municipal lines:

1. Your specialists, from twelve months of statements. Most north Peoria households see their cardiologist, orthopedist or oncologist in Sun City or at Arrowhead, and those are the practices most often contracted with some plans and not others. A specialist you see quarterly is harder to replace than a primary care office.
2. The hospital, and the groups inside it. Banner Boswell in Sun City, Abrazo Arrowhead and Banner Thunderbird in Glendale are the three most north Peoria households actually use. The hospitalist, anesthesia and radiology groups inside each contract separately from the building. How Advantage networks are built explains why the logo in a directory is not the whole answer.
3. The 2027 directory, not this year’s. Networks reset in January, and this is precisely the year both Aetna and UnitedHealthcare have said their networks are getting narrower. A plan’s 2027 provider search is the one that counts; a call to the practice asking “will you be in network with this plan on January 1?” beats it.
4. Your own ZIP. Peoria quotes pull from the ZIP, and the Peoria–Glendale–Sun City seam is stitched tightly enough that two houses a mile apart can see different line-ups. Why Peoria quotes differ by ZIP covers it.

A PPO’s out-of-network benefit is also not what people from other states sometimes assume it is. It costs more per visit, the plan can still require prior authorization, and the out-of-network cap is higher than the in-network one. If the reason you chose a PPO was really “I want to see any doctor, anywhere,” that is door two.

Door two, Original Medicare with a supplement. A plan leaving Medicare is a federal guaranteed-issue situation. From 60 days before your coverage ends to 63 days after — November 1, 2026 through March 4, 2027 — a Medicare Supplement carrier must issue you Plan A, B, D, G, K or L with no health questions, and C or F if you were eligible for Medicare before 2020. Arizona has no birthday rule and no annual Medigap open window, so for anyone who has been in Advantage more than a year this window is the only way around underwriting, and it is the door that opens widest for a discontinued-plan member in particular.

It tends to fit three kinds of Elite PPO households I see in Peoria: the Trilogy at Vistancia and Westbrook Village households who are gone four months a year, since a supplement travels with Original Medicare to any doctor in the country who accepts it; the households whose specialists are scattered between Sun City, Arrowhead and Scottsdale, where one 2027 network reaching all three is possible but fragile; and the households that would rather budget a known monthly premium than carry a cap that in Maricopa County now runs up to $8,900 on some plans. Plan G against Plan N for Arizona is the next read, and the comparison tool runs the arithmetic. The structural cost is the Part B premium of $202.90 a month in 2026 that you already pay, plus the supplement, plus a stand-alone Part D plan — every one of which carries the 2027 out-of-pocket cap on covered drugs.

Door three, doing nothing. On January 1 you are in Original Medicare with no drug plan and no annual cap, and after 63 days without creditable drug coverage a permanent Part D penalty starts. It is only a plan if a supplement and a Part D plan are already arranged.

If your Aetna plan continues

If you are on Signature HMO, Signature PPO, Value Care or Eagle, you got an Annual Notice of Change by September 30, not a non-renewal letter, and the guaranteed-issue window above does not apply to you. Read the notice for the cap — Signature PPO’s rises by $800 — and for the network, because Aetna’s “renewed focus to HMO products” can show up as a PPO network that is narrower in 2027 even where the plan itself continues. How to read the notice is the walk-through. You can still change plans between October 15 and December 7 for any reason; you just do it under the ordinary rules.

The dates

• October 15 to December 7, 2026. Annual Enrollment. The only window with a clean January 1 start.
• November 1, 2026 to March 4, 2027. The Medigap guaranteed-issue window for a discontinued plan.
• December 8, 2026 to February 28, 2027. The special period for a non-renewed plan, starting the first of the month after you enroll, with Original Medicare in between.

What to do when your plan is discontinued walks the whole calendar week by week.

The short version

• Aetna is not leaving Arizona. It keeps Maricopa, Pima and Pinal and leaves Coconino, Yavapai and Mohave. Nationally, 41 states from 43, with a stated shift toward HMOs.
• In Maricopa County, four Aetna general plans ended — Elite PPO, Prime HMO under H4835-001, Prime Extra and Signature Extra — and five continue or arrive, four with drug coverage.
• The new Prime HMO is a different contract. Only your letter says whether you are moved into it.
• Elite PPO members in Peoria have a PPO-to-PPO move available, checked specialists first, then the hospital groups, then the 2027 directory, then your own ZIP.
• The Medigap door is open November 1 to March 4 with no health questions, and in Arizona there is no other door around underwriting. It fits travelers, scattered specialists and households that would rather budget than carry a cap.

If you would rather have someone check it for you

Bring the letter, your cards and the pill bottles, and I will run your doctor list against the 2027 networks in your ZIP — Aetna’s continuing plans and everyone else’s — and show you what the supplement door would cost beside them. It takes about half an hour and there is no charge for the conversation. I am independent, so the answer can be any plan on the county list or none of them.

I work with people across Peoria and on the Glendale side of the seam, where many of the same specialists are. The office is in Anthem, roughly 25 minutes from north Peoria out the Carefree Highway and down Lake Pleasant Parkway, and most of this gets done by phone. Call (602) 844-6002 or book a time — and if you call or text, that is your consent for me to reply the same way.