Is Cigna leaving Medicare Advantage in Arizona for 2027?

No, and the question is a year late. Cigna left Medicare Advantage on March 19, 2025, when it finished selling its Medicare Advantage, Part D and Medicare supplement businesses to Health Care Service Corporation, and since January 1, 2026 those same plans have been sold as HealthSpring. There is no Cigna-branded Medicare plan anywhere for 2027. The company that now owns them is making the largest county pullback of any carrier in the 2027 CMS file, but in Arizona the map barely moves: HealthSpring keeps four of its five general plans in Maricopa, Pima and Pinal counties. One plan ends, HealthSpring Preferred H0354-001, about 11,000 Maricopa members. The much larger Alliance HMO continues, and continues under the name Preferred, which is why so many kitchen-table conversations this month start with the wrong letter.

I am writing this for Peoria, and I am writing it because “Cigna” is still what people say. The card in the drawer may say HealthSpring, the bills may say HealthSpring, and the household still calls it the Cigna plan, which means the first question I get is whether Cigna is pulling out of Arizona. The honest answer has three parts: Cigna is gone, HealthSpring is staying, and one specific contract is ending while another is borrowing its name. Those three facts need keeping apart, so here they are in order.

Cigna, HCSC and HealthSpring: who owns your plan

Cigna announced in January 2024 that it would sell its Medicare businesses, and the sale to Health Care Service Corporation closed on March 19, 2025, for a reported $3.3 billion. The package was the whole Medicare line: Medicare Advantage, stand-alone Part D, Medicare supplement, and a care-management arm. Cigna kept selling the plans under its own name through the end of 2025, then HCSC rebranded them for the 2026 plan year. Members got new ID cards; the contract numbers, benefits and networks carried over unchanged from the 2025 plans. Cigna’s own site now says plainly that it has no affiliation with HealthSpring. If the name sounds old, that is because it is: Cigna bought a company called HealthSpring in 2012 to get into Medicare Advantage in the first place, and HCSC has simply put the old name back on the door.

Two things about HCSC matter to an Arizona reader. First, it is the parent of the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and one other state, and it is not related to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona. HealthSpring and AZ Blue Best Life are different companies with different contracts and different networks, whatever the blue cross on HCSC’s corporate letterhead suggests. Second, HCSC is the carrier making the deepest 2027 cuts in the country by county count. The Commission’s October 3 analysis of the CMS landscape file has HCSC’s standard-plan footprint falling from 948 counties to 450, its plan count from 283 to 200, with 48 PPOs and 35 HMOs cut and its special-needs plan count held at 51; it leaves seven markets entirely, Connecticut, Kansas, Montana, New York, Oregon and Washington, D.C. among them, and in Texas it goes from 229 counties to 47. Goodsurance’s September 19 piece reads the same file as a pivot toward HMOs and chronic-condition and dual-eligible special-needs plans. None of that is a judgment on anyone’s plan; a carrier redrawing its map is a business decision made across thirty states. In Arizona, the redrawing came to one contract.

Plan by plan: HealthSpring in Arizona, 2026 against 2027

HealthSpring sells in three Arizona counties, Maricopa, Pima and Pinal, and nowhere else in the state in either year. The table is the CMS landscape files for the two years, matched by contract and plan number, with September 2026 Maricopa enrollment from the CMS monthly file. Star Ratings are the 2026 ratings in force now: CMS said the 2027 ratings would appear on Medicare.gov on or around October 8, and they had not been posted when this was written, so every star you see anywhere today is still a 2026 star.

Source: CMS CY2026 and CY2027 Medicare Advantage / Part D Landscape files and the September 2026 CPSC enrollment file, Maricopa County rows, matched by Contract Plan ID. Caps are in-network maximum out-of-pocket amounts. Pima and Pinal carry the same six plans at the same terms. HealthSpring's dual-eligible plans are not shown.

Four things to read off that table.

One plan ended, and it is the smaller of the two that share a name. HealthSpring Preferred H0354-001 carried 11,078 Maricopa members in September, plus 1,479 in Pima and 651 in Pinal, about 13,200 people. It is absent from the 2027 file in every county. Its members are getting the non-renewal letter dated October 2, and the rest of this post is mostly for them.

The biggest HealthSpring plan in the county continues, renamed, at a $900 higher cap. HealthSpring Alliance H0354-028 had 31,264 Maricopa members, nearly three times the ended plan, and it is sold in 2027 as HealthSpring Preferred (HMO). Its cap goes from $2,300 to $3,200 and its drug deductible from $200 to $500. Those members get an Annual Notice of Change, not a non-renewal letter, and their plan is not ending; it is getting more expensive in a bad year.

Every continuing plan’s cap went up. Preferred Savings by $950, Full Savings by $650 on its way to being called Extra Savings, True Choice by $600, Achieve by $100. Two of the drug deductibles went down and three went up. For a household that sees a doctor twice a year the caps are invisible; for a household that had a hospital stay last year, the cap is the number.

A $3,200 cap is mid-list for 2027. Eleven general plans on the Maricopa list carry a cap at or below $3,000 for 2027, so an ended-plan member who liked H0354-001 for its $2,750 cap is not choosing between the renamed Preferred and nothing. The cap is one column; the network is the one that decides.

Two plans named Preferred, and why the name is the trap

This is the part that causes real harm if it is skimmed. For 2027 Maricopa County has a HealthSpring Preferred (HMO), and it is not the plan that was called HealthSpring Preferred (HMO) in 2026. The 2026 Preferred is contract H0354-001 and ends December 31. The 2027 Preferred is contract H0354-028, which spent 2026 as HealthSpring Alliance. A member of the ended plan who hears “Preferred continues” and relaxes has heard a true sentence about somebody else’s plan.

Whether H0354-001 members are moved into H0354-028 automatically, or must enrol in it or anything else, is what the October 2 letter says, and the letter is the only authority on it. The same question came up with Aetna’s new Prime, which took the old Prime’s name on a different contract, and the answer is the same: a shared name does not mean a shared network, a shared formulary or a shared cap. Read the contract number on anything you are quoted.

The network difference is not hypothetical. HonorHealth’s own insurance page, updated July 15, 2026, lists the 2026 HealthSpring Preferred and Achieve plans with all HonorHealth locations and practice sites participating, primary care included, and lists HealthSpring Alliance with hospitals, facilities, urgent care and Medical Group specialists participating but HonorHealth primary care doctors not. That is a 2026 list and HonorHealth says it refreshes it in January, so it proves nothing about 2027 directories. What it proves is that the plan now wearing the Preferred name had a different primary-care network from the plan that is ending, as recently as this summer. A north Phoenix or Anthem household on H0354-001 whose family doctor is at HonorHealth Sonoran Crossing or Deer Valley should treat the 2027 Preferred as a stranger until the doctor’s name is found in its 2027 directory. The HonorHealth and AZ Blue post has the full list with its notes.

If you were on HealthSpring Preferred H0354-001 in Peoria

Your coverage under the plan ends December 31, 2026. Your Medicare does not end; Parts A and B are federal, and the plan was only the delivery method. Three doors open, and the order to check them in is the order that matters for the west side of the Valley.

1. Your specialists first, from twelve months of statements. Most north Peoria households see their cardiologist, orthopedist or oncologist in Sun City or at Arrowhead, and the hospitalist, anesthesia and radiology groups inside Banner Boswell, Abrazo Arrowhead and Banner Thunderbird contract separately from the buildings. How Advantage networks are built explains why a logo in a directory is not the whole answer. Check the doctor’s name in each candidate plan’s 2027 directory, HealthSpring’s renamed Preferred included, and do not stop at the hospital.
2. Then the cap and the drug deductible, against your own worst year and your own pill bottles. How out-of-pocket costs stack is the explainer. The 2027 Preferred’s $500 drug deductible is $300 more than the plan you are leaving had, and it does not show up until the first brand-name fill in January.
3. Then the ZIP. Peoria quotes pull from the ZIP, and the Peoria–Glendale–Sun City seam is stitched tightly enough that two houses a mile apart are offered different line-ups. Why Peoria quotes differ by ZIP covers it.

If door one is another Advantage plan, Annual Enrollment runs October 15 to December 7 for a clean January 1 start, and because your plan is ending you also get a special enrollment period from December 8 to February 28. Use the first window if you can; an enrollment made in January starts February 1, and the gap month is Original Medicare with no cap and no drug plan unless you arranged one.

Door two is the one a continuing-plan member does not get, and for an affluent Peoria retiree it is often the better door. A plan leaving Medicare is a federal guaranteed-issue situation. From November 1, 2026 through March 4, 2027, a Medicare Supplement in Plan A, B, D, G, K or L must be issued to you without health questions, at the carrier’s standard rate for your age, and Arizona has no birthday rule and no annual Medigap window, so this is a door that will not reopen on its own. 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. What you get for it is no network at all: the cardiologist in Sun City, the orthopedist at Arrowhead and the summer doctor in Flagstaff are all simply covered. Plan G against Plan N for Arizona is the read if that is the direction. The full door-by-door, including what doing nothing looks like on January 1, is in what to do when your plan is discontinued in Peoria.

One more thing that does not change with the plan: if you pay IRMAA, a forced plan change does not touch it. The surcharge is set by Social Security from your tax return, not by the carrier, and it follows you to any door.

If your HealthSpring plan continues

Your plan is in the 2027 file and the document in your mailbox is an Annual Notice of Change. The question is not where to go but whether the plan at its 2027 terms, with the cap and deductible changes in the table, still fits against a county list that changed around it. Run the same three checks, specialists first, in the same order. If after all that the plan still fits, you do nothing and it renews on January 1. If it does not, Annual Enrollment is open to you too, October 15 to December 7, for any plan on the county list. No guaranteed-issue Medigap window opens for a continuing plan, so a member who would rather be on Original Medicare with a supplement goes through ordinary underwriting, and whether that is worth attempting depends on health history.

If your HealthSpring plan is a drug plan, not an Advantage plan

By headcount this is the larger HealthSpring story in Arizona, and it is the one the Cigna headlines miss entirely. HealthSpring Assurance Rx, contract S5617-138, had about 42,600 Arizona members in September, most of them supplement households who chose it because it cost $0 a month with a $615 deductible. That contract is not in the 2027 file. What the 2027 Arizona file lists instead is a HealthSpring Assurance Rx on contract S5715-045, at $9.30 a month with a $700 deductible, the maximum CMS allows for 2027. S5715 is the drug-plan contract HCSC’s own Blue Cross plans already use in other states, so the shape of this is a carrier moving an acquired book onto its own paper, but whether a given member is carried across automatically or has to enrol is, again, what the letter says. HealthSpring Extra Rx, contract S5617-378, about 6,400 Arizona members at $66.40 a month, has no 2027 listing under any contract.

Nine dollars a month is not the question for an Assurance Rx household in Vistancia. The questions are whether the 2027 formulary on the new contract puts your prescriptions on the same tiers, whether your pharmacy is still preferred, and whether the $85 increase in the deductible lands on a drug you fill in January. All of that is in the notice and none of it is in the premium, and any stand-alone drug plan on the Arizona list can be chosen for any reason between October 15 and December 7.

The dates

• Late September. The Annual Notice of Change arrives for the continuing plans.
• October 2. The non-renewal letter is dated, for H0354-001 members. Federal rules require it at least 90 days before the plan ends.
• On or around October 8. CMS posts the 2027 Star Ratings. Until then, every rating you see is 2026’s.
• October 15 to December 7, 2026. Annual Enrollment. The only window with a clean January 1 start, for Advantage and drug plans alike.
• November 1, 2026 to March 4, 2027. The guaranteed-issue Medigap window, for members of the ended plan only.
• December 8, 2026 to February 28, 2027. The special enrollment period for members of the ended plan.
• January 1 to March 31, 2027. The Medicare Advantage open enrollment period, one switch, for anyone who finds in January that the 2027 version of their plan does not fit.

The short version

• Cigna is not leaving Medicare Advantage in 2027 because it already left in March 2025. The plans are HealthSpring now, owned by Health Care Service Corporation, which is not AZ Blue.
• HealthSpring stays in Arizona with four of its five general plans in Maricopa, Pima and Pinal, while nationally HCSC’s county footprint roughly halves.
• HealthSpring Preferred H0354-001 ends. About 11,000 Maricopa members and 13,200 statewide get a non-renewal letter dated October 2.
• The Alliance HMO, 31,000 Maricopa members, continues under the Preferred name at a $3,200 cap and a $500 drug deductible. Same name, different contract, and by HonorHealth’s 2026 list a different primary-care network.
• Both old-contract drug plans are gone from the file. Assurance Rx reappears on a new contract at $9.30 with a $700 deductible; Extra Rx does not reappear.
• Ended-plan members get the Medigap door, guaranteed issue from November 1 to March 4, and Arizona has no birthday rule to reopen it later.

If you would rather have someone check it for you

Bring the letter, your cards and the pill bottles, and I will tell you which letter you are holding, run your doctor list against the 2027 directories for the renamed Preferred and the rest of the county list in your ZIP, and put your prescriptions through the new deductibles so you see the full-year number rather than the premium. It takes about half an hour and there is no charge for the conversation. I am independent, so the answer can be the HealthSpring plan that continues, any other plan on the county list, or a supplement through the window that only an ended plan opens.

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.