Is Wellcare leaving Medicare Advantage in Arizona for 2027?

No. Wellcare is selling Medicare Advantage in Arizona for 2027, but on a much smaller map. In Maricopa County, one Wellcare general plan continues where three were sold this year; the two statewide HMOs it sold in eleven rural counties are gone from all eleven; seven Arizona counties have no general Wellcare plan at all next year; and both Wellcare stand-alone drug plans move off $0. Nationally, Wellcare’s parent is making the largest county pullback of any insurer for 2027, but the three states it leaves outright are Hawaii, Oklahoma and Tennessee, not Arizona. 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 Peoria, and for north Peoria in particular, because Wellcare’s Maricopa plans sat in a specific niche there. Wellcare Giveback was the plan a lot of 85383 households chose for the Part B reduction, and Wellcare Simple Value was the one chosen for its low cap. Both end. The plan that continues, plain Wellcare Simple, has a lower cap than either of them, which makes the in-house move look obvious on paper — and the network check that follows is where the actual decision lives.

What is happening nationally

Wellcare is a Centene brand, and Centene’s 2027 pullback is the biggest of any Medicare Advantage carrier by county count. Healthcare Dive’s analysis of the CMS landscape file, published September 29, puts Centene at 344 counties departed for 2027, against 140 for UnitedHealthcare and 123 for Aetna. Modern Healthcare reported in August that Centene is leaving Hawaii, Oklahoma and Tennessee entirely, about 340,000 members across 158 counties, and that the company has said it continues to exit markets where it cannot operate profitably.

Arizona is not one of those states, and it is worth saying plainly that 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. What it means locally is a narrower Wellcare, not a departed one.

Plan by plan: Wellcare in Arizona, 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 2026 Star Ratings are the ones in force now; every Wellcare Medicare Advantage plan in Arizona carried 3.5 stars this year, and CMS publishes the 2027 ratings this month.

Source: CMS CY2026 and CY2027 Medicare Advantage / Part D Landscape files and the September 2026 CPSC enrollment file, Arizona rows, matched by Contract Plan ID. Caps are in-network maximum out-of-pocket amounts. Member totals exclude counties CMS suppresses at fewer than eleven enrollees. Wellcare's two dual-eligible plans are consolidated into a single plan for 2027 and are not shown.

Three things to read off that table.

In the Valley, Wellcare consolidated onto its lowest-cap plan. Giveback at $7,600 and Simple Value at $3,000 end; Simple at $2,500 continues. Roughly 1,100 Maricopa members are on the two ending plans against nearly 4,000 on the one that stays. For a Simple Value member the continuing plan is cheaper on the cap by $500; for a Giveback member it is cheaper by $5,100 but without the Part B reduction, which is the thing they bought it for.

In rural Arizona, Wellcare went from eleven counties to four. The two statewide HMOs carried about 9,200 members between them in September. Members in Cochise, Gila, Santa Cruz and Yuma have a new Wellcare Simple to move to, with a cap $2,800 higher than the old one. Members in Coconino, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Mohave, Navajo and Yavapai do not: there is no general Wellcare plan in those seven counties for 2027. Yavapai alone had about 1,300 on the two plans, Mohave about 900.

The same contract carries everything. Every ended plan and the continuing Simple sit on H0351. That makes an automatic crosswalk into Simple possible, and whether it happens is written in your October 2 letter and nowhere else. If the letter says you will be moved unless you act, that is still a choice you are making, and the 2027 network is what you are choosing.

If you were on Wellcare Giveback or Simple Value in Peoria

Take the Giveback member as the worked example, because that is the call I am getting. You have the usual three doors, and in north Peoria the first door has a particular order of checking.

Door one, another Advantage plan. The in-house move is Wellcare Simple at $0 with a $2,500 cap, and it is not the only low-cap HMO on the Maricopa list: for 2027 the county has eleven HMOs with drug coverage at a $3,000 in-network cap or lower, from eight different carriers. If what you want is the Part B reduction back, Maricopa lists several 2027 plans with “Giveback” in the name from other carriers; the size of the reduction is not in the CMS landscape file, so it has to be read from each plan’s own 2027 summary of benefits, and whether a giveback is worth chasing at all depends on the rest of the plan. Whichever direction, 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 HMOs 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. Wellcare Simple’s 2027 provider list is the one that counts, even if it is the same carrier you have now, and a call to the practice asking “will you be in network with this plan on January 1?” beats any directory.
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.

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 opens widest for a discontinued-plan member in particular.

It tends to fit three kinds of Wellcare 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 recent arrivals who took a $0 HMO on landing because it was simple and have since built a specialist list scattered between Sun City, Arrowhead and Scottsdale; and the households that would rather budget a known monthly premium than carry a cap. 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. Wellcare’s own notice page says it the same way: do nothing and you return to Original Medicare. It is only a plan if a supplement and a Part D plan are already arranged.

If your Wellcare plan is a Part D plan, not an Advantage plan

A lot of Peoria supplement households use a Wellcare drug plan, because both of them were $0 a month in Arizona this year. Neither is ending, so you get an Annual Notice of Change rather than a non-renewal letter, and the change is in the premium: Wellcare Value Script goes to $5.30 a month for 2027 and Wellcare Classic to $7.30, with the deductible on both rising from $615 to $700. That is a small number, and the premium is not the question anyway. 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. How to read the notice is the walk-through. You can change drug plans for any reason between October 15 and December 7.

The second-home question

Wellcare’s rural exit lands on 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, Coconino or Mohave plan — Advantage plans are tied to the county of your permanent address — but families do choose a carrier partly because a relative up north has it, and that reasoning no longer holds. For 2027 Yavapai and Coconino each have three carriers selling a general plan, and Mohave and Navajo have two. Which Arizona plans are ending for 2027 has the full rural table. If the months away are the real driver, that is door two again: a supplement does not care which county you are in.

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

• Wellcare is not leaving Arizona. Centene is making the largest county pullback of any carrier for 2027 and leaving three states, none of them Arizona.
• In Maricopa County, Wellcare Giveback and Wellcare Simple Value ended, about 1,100 members between them. Wellcare Simple continues at $0 with a $2,500 cap, the lowest of the three.
• Seven rural counties have no general Wellcare plan for 2027 — Coconino, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Mohave, Navajo and Yavapai — and four others get a new, higher-cap Wellcare Simple.
• Both Wellcare drug plans continue but move off $0, to $5.30 and $7.30 a month, with a $700 deductible.
• 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 — Wellcare Simple 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.