Is Humana leaving Medicare Advantage in Arizona for 2027?

No. Humana is not leaving Medicare Advantage in Arizona for 2027, and it is not discontinuing a single Arizona plan. Every Humana plan in the CMS 2026 Arizona file is in the 2027 file under the same contract number and in the same counties, and one new PPO joins the Maricopa, Pima and Pinal list. The roughly 600,000 members Humana is releasing nationally are somewhere else. What an Arizona Humana member gets this month is an Annual Notice of Change rather than a non-renewal letter, and there is real movement in it: the county’s largest Humana HMO raises its cap by $500, two plans change their names, the Regional PPO premium nearly triples, and all three Humana drug plans move up, the most popular one from $2.50 to $22.30 a month.

I am writing this for Peoria, and for north Peoria in particular, because Humana is the carrier I hear about most up there. By plan count it is the largest Medicare Advantage seller in Maricopa County for 2027, eleven of the county’s forty-five general plans with drug coverage, and one Humana HMO alone carried about 34,600 Maricopa members in September. When the headlines say Humana is dropping 600,000 people, that is the plan a lot of 85383 households are holding when they call. So the first job is to say plainly that it continues, and the second is to walk through what actually changed, because “your plan continues” and “your plan is the same” are different sentences.

What is happening nationally

Humana told investors on July 29 that its 2027 bids include plan and market exits affecting about 600,000 members, roughly 8% of its 7.2 million Medicare Advantage members. Its chief financial officer, Celeste Mellet, described the approach as cutting the lower tail of profitability and returns rather than thinning benefits evenly across every plan, in service of a sustainable pre-tax margin of at least 3% by 2028. The carrier has said most of the affected plans are rated 3.5 stars or lower, that it expects to move about 40% of those members into other Humana plans, which is the share it kept after its 2025 exits, and that it is not publishing a list: the notice is the letter, dated October 2, to the members concerned. For comparison, its 2026 exits took it out of three states and 194 counties.

Set against the rest of the industry this is a middle-sized pullback. Healthcare Dive’s analysis of the CMS landscape file, published September 29, has Centene departing 344 counties, the most of any carrier, and has Humana adding 39 counties for 2027 even as it culls plans elsewhere. None of this is a judgment on the plans or the people in them. A carrier redrawing its map is a business decision made across the country, and in Arizona the map did not move.

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

This comes from the CMS landscape files for the two years, matched by contract and plan number, with September 2026 county enrollment from the CMS monthly enrollment file. Member counts are September’s and will have moved a little since. The Star Ratings shown are the 2026 ratings in force now; CMS publishes the 2027 ratings this month and they were not out when this was written. Premiums, caps and Part D deductibles are the Maricopa County rows, which can differ from the same plan’s figures in Pima or Pinal.

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. The HumanaChoice R7220-001 Regional PPO without drug coverage, 119 Maricopa members, also continues unchanged and is omitted. Humana's dual-eligible plans are not shown.

Four things to read off that table.

The two big HMOs raise their caps by $500 and add a drug deductible. Gold Plus H0028-074 and the plan now called Total Complete carried about 49,000 Maricopa members between them in September, more than every other Humana plan in the county combined. Both go from a $2,900 cap to $3,400, and both go from no Part D deductible to a $200 one. That is the change most Peoria Humana households will find in their notice, and it is a change in the worst-year arithmetic, not the typical-year arithmetic.

Nothing ended, and one plan arrived. Humana Value Choice (PPO) is new to the Maricopa, Pima and Pinal list at $0 with a $5,220 cap, the same cap as HumanaChoice H5216-265, which it sits beside. For a PPO household that is one more option, and it is a new plan with a 2027 directory, so it has no track record in this county to check.

The Regional PPO premium goes from $37 to $110. Only about 150 Maricopa members hold HumanaChoice R7220-002, and about 2,260 statewide, but for them this is the largest single change on the Humana list, a 2.5-star plan nearly tripling in premium while its cap rises $350. A member on it is not being discontinued, which means no guaranteed-issue Medigap window opens for them automatically; the ordinary Annual Enrollment comparison is their route.

Every Part D deductible on a Humana plan went up or appeared. The $615 deductibles become $700, the maximum CMS allows for 2027. H5216-435 goes from no deductible to $450. The two chronic-condition plans move too. If your prescriptions are mostly generics on a tier the plan exempts from its deductible, that may touch you very little; if you take a brand-name drug, it is the first several hundred dollars of next year.

The two name changes, and why they are not a non-renewal

This is the part that generates the most confusion in a Peoria kitchen, because the notice says your plan has a new name and the news says Humana is dropping plans. Humana Gold Plus H4461-056 is sold as Humana Total Complete in 2027. HumanaChoice Giveback H7617-051 is sold as Humana Essentials Plus Giveback. In both cases the contract and plan numbers on your card are unchanged, the plan is in the 2027 file in the same counties, and the document in your mailbox is an Annual Notice of Change, not a non-renewal letter. A non-renewal letter is a specific federal document, dated October 2 and required at least 90 days before the plan ends, and no Arizona Humana member is getting one.

One wrinkle worth knowing. A different plan, H5216-435, already carried the Essentials Plus Giveback name this year and continues under it. So for 2027 Maricopa County has two Humana PPOs called Essentials Plus Giveback: one at a $6,100 cap with a $700 drug deductible, the other at $7,850 with $450. They are different plans on different contracts with different networks. Anything you are quoted should carry a contract number, and you should read it.

If you are on Humana in Peoria: what to check before December 7

Your plan continues, so the question is not “where do I go” but “is this still the right plan at its 2027 terms, against a county list that changed around it”. Four checks, in the order that matters for north Peoria.

1. The cap, against your own worst year. A $3,400 cap is still among the lower ones on the Maricopa list, and for a household that sees a doctor twice a year the $500 increase is invisible. For a household that had a hospital stay last year, it is the number. How out-of-pocket costs stack is the explainer.
2. 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 practices are contracted with some HMOs and not others. Networks reset in January, and a continuing plan is allowed to change its directory at the same time its name changes. How Advantage networks are built explains why a hospital’s logo in a directory is not the whole answer; the hospitalist, anesthesia and radiology groups inside Banner Boswell, Abrazo Arrowhead and Banner Thunderbird contract separately from the buildings.
3. The drug deductible, against your own list. Pull the 2027 formulary for your plan and check the tier of each prescription and whether that tier is exempt from the new deductible. The premium did not change on most of these plans; the deductible did, and it does not show up until you fill the first brand-name prescription in January.
4. Your ZIP, not your neighbor’s. Peoria quotes pull from the ZIP, and the Peoria–Glendale–Sun City seam is stitched tightly enough that two houses a mile apart can be offered different line-ups. Why Peoria quotes differ by ZIP covers it. If you are chasing a Part B reduction, whether a giveback is worth it depends on the rest of the plan, and the size of the reduction is not in the CMS file; it has to be read from each plan’s 2027 summary of benefits.

If after all that the plan still fits, you do nothing and it renews on January 1. If it does not, Annual Enrollment runs October 15 to December 7 and you can move to any plan on the county list, Humana’s or anyone else’s, with a January 1 start. When open enrollment starts and what it covers has the calendar.

The Medicare Supplement door deserves a sentence of honesty here, because it is the door a discontinued-plan member gets and a continuing-plan member does not. A plan leaving Medicare is a federal guaranteed-issue situation that opens a window from November 1, 2026 through March 4, 2027 with no health questions. Because no Humana plan is leaving Arizona, no Humana member gets that window on those grounds. Arizona has no birthday rule and no annual Medigap open window, so a Humana 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. Plan G against Plan N for Arizona is the read if that is the direction, and 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.

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

This is the larger Humana story in Arizona by headcount, and it is the one the headlines miss. Humana Value Rx had about 57,000 Arizona members in September, 31,000 of them in Maricopa, most of them supplement households who chose it because it cost $2.50 a month. For 2027 it costs $22.30, and its deductible goes from $601 to $687. Humana Basic Rx goes from $0 to $6.30 with a $700 deductible, and Humana Premier Rx, the no-deductible plan, goes from $119.20 to $137.60 and gains a $350 deductible it did not have.

All three continue, so members get an Annual Notice of Change and can change drug plans for any reason between October 15 and December 7. Twenty dollars a month is not the question. The question is whether your own prescriptions moved tier and whether the pharmacy you use is still preferred, both of which are in the notice and neither of which shows up in the premium. A Value Rx household in Vistancia paying $240 more a year in premium for the same formulary and the same pharmacy may well stay; the same household whose one brand-name drug moved up a tier should run the full-year number against the other stand-alone plans on the Arizona list before December 7.

The rural counties and the second-home question

Humana’s Arizona footprint outside the Valley is unchanged too: the same number of Humana general plans in every one of the fifteen counties it sold in this year, from four in Apache and Cochise to nine in Mohave and Yavapai. What moved there is caps. The Gold Plus HMO sold in Yavapai goes from $4,900 to $5,999, the Mohave one from $4,900 to $5,400, and the HumanaChoice PPO sold in Mohave, Navajo, Santa Cruz and Yavapai from $5,450 to $5,999.

That matters to a specific kind of Peoria household: the one with a summer place in Prescott, Flagstaff or Lake Havasu. A Maricopa plan was never a Yavapai or Mohave plan, since Advantage plans are tied to the county of your permanent address, but a Humana PPO’s out-of-network benefit is often the reason a traveling household chose it, and the out-of-network cap on a PPO is a separate, higher number from the in-network one in the table above. If the months away are the real driver, that is the supplement conversation again, underwriting and all. Which Arizona plans are ending for 2027 has the full rural table for the carriers that did leave counties, and the Aetna, Wellcare and UnitedHealthcare pictures are each written up the same way as this one.

The dates

• Late September. The Annual Notice of Change arrives. It is the only document an Arizona Humana member needs to read this month; there is no non-renewal letter coming.
• October 15 to December 7, 2026. Annual Enrollment. The only window with a clean January 1 start, for Advantage and drug plans alike.
• January 1 to March 31, 2027. The Medicare Advantage open enrollment period, one switch to another Advantage plan or back to Original Medicare, for anyone who finds in January that the 2027 version of their plan does not fit.

The short version

• Humana is not leaving Arizona and is not discontinuing any Arizona plan. Every Humana plan in the CMS 2026 Arizona file is in the 2027 file, same contract numbers, same counties, and one new PPO is added.
• The 600,000 members Humana is releasing nationally are elsewhere. The carrier is also adding 39 counties for 2027.
• The county’s two largest Humana HMOs go from a $2,900 cap to $3,400 and add a $200 drug deductible; every Part D deductible on a Humana plan rose or appeared.
• Two plans are renamed, not ended. Gold Plus H4461-056 becomes Total Complete; HumanaChoice Giveback H7617-051 becomes Essentials Plus Giveback, a name a second, different Humana plan already uses.
• All three Humana drug plans move up, Value Rx from $2.50 to $22.30 a month, and 57,000 Arizona members are on that one.
• No guaranteed-issue Medigap window opens for a continuing plan. The decision is an Annual Enrollment comparison, by December 7.

If you would rather have someone check it for you

Bring the notice, your cards and the pill bottles, and I will run your doctor list against the 2027 Humana directory 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 plan you already have, any other 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.