My Medicare Advantage plan is being discontinued. What do I do in Peoria, AZ?

You keep Medicare. The letter dated October 2 means your Medicare Advantage plan stops paying on December 31, 2026, and you choose how Medicare is delivered to you from January 1. You have three doors — another Advantage plan, Original Medicare with a supplement and a drug plan, or doing nothing, which is a door too — and three dates: December 7 for a clean January 1 start, February 28 for the special period that follows, and March 4 for a Medicare Supplement without health questions.

Yesterday I listed which Arizona plans are ending for 2027. This is the next question, the one that comes by phone the day the letter lands: what do I actually do? The answer in Peoria has a local shape, because the plan you pick next matters less than whether its network reaches the doctors you already drive to — in Sun City, at Arrowhead, along Happy Valley Road — and because a city stitched across the Peoria–Glendale–Sun City seam is exactly where “my neighbor switched to X” is the wrong research method.

First, read which letter you have

Two different letters went out in the last week and people mix them up.

The Annual Notice of Change arrived by September 30. It says your plan continues in 2027 and here is what changed — premium, copays, drug tiers, the network. If that is what you have, your plan is not ending, and this is the walk-through for it.

The non-renewal notice is dated October 2, because federal rules require at least 90 days’ notice before a plan ends on December 31. It says the plan will not be offered next year and your coverage ends December 31. You get one letter or the other, never both. If yours is the non-renewal notice, two things to do with it before anything else: write down the plan name and the plan number on it, and put the letter somewhere you can find it in November. A Medicare Supplement carrier may ask for a copy to prove your guaranteed-issue right, and the plan number is what you need to look up what replaced it.

One trap. Some ended plans have a 2027 plan with the same name under a new number — in Maricopa County, a plan called Aetna Medicare Prime ended under one number and a new plan called Aetna Medicare Prime appears under another. Whether that is a crosswalk, where members are moved across automatically, or a non-renewal with a coincidental name, is answered only by your letter. If the letter says you will be enrolled in a named plan unless you act, read that plan’s 2027 network and drug list as if it were a stranger’s, because for network purposes it is.

The three dates

Sources: Medicare.gov Open Enrollment; 42 CFR 422.62(b)(1); Medicare.gov, when can I buy a Medigap policy. Dates computed from a December 31, 2026 coverage end.

Everything below fits inside those three rows. The order I would do it in: decide which door by the end of October, so that November is for applications rather than research.

Door one: another Medicare Advantage plan — check the network in this order

The county menu is not short. Maricopa County has 45 general Advantage plans with drug coverage for 2027 against 46 this year, so a replacement exists on paper for every ended plan. The question is never “is there a plan” but “is there a plan that reaches my doctors,” and in Peoria that has to be checked in a particular order, because the city’s care runs across municipal lines.

1. Your specialists first, not your primary care doctor. North Peoria households drive to Sun City and Arrowhead for most specialist care — cardiology, orthopedics, oncology, the practices that grew up around Medicare patients along the Sun City side of the line. A specialist you see quarterly is harder to replace than a primary care office, and it is the specialists who are most often contracted with some plans and not others. Make the list from your explanation-of-benefits statements for the last twelve months, not from memory.

2. The hospital, as a separate question. Banner Boswell in Sun City, Abrazo Arrowhead and Banner Thunderbird in Glendale are the three most north Peoria households actually use, and they are not carried identically by every Advantage plan in the county. Then ask the second question most people miss: the hospitalist, anesthesia and radiology groups working inside a hospital contract separately from the building. How Advantage networks are built explains why a hospital’s logo in a directory is not the whole answer.

3. The 2027 directory, not the 2026 one. Networks reset in January. A directory you check this week may still be showing the current year; the plan’s 2027 provider search is the one that counts, and a phone call to the practice — “will you be in network with this plan on January 1?” — beats both. Practices around Arrowhead have changed ownership more than once in the last few years, and a group changing hands can change which plans it takes for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

4. Your prescriptions, from the bottles. Dose and manufacturer both change what a drug costs under a given plan’s formulary, and the pharmacy you use — preferred or not — changes it again. Every plan that includes Part D carries the 2027 out-of-pocket cap of $2,100, so the comparison is about what you pay before the cap, not whether there is one.

5. Your ZIP, not your friend’s. Plans are offered by county, but a quote pulls from your ZIP, and the Peoria–Glendale–Sun City seam is stitched tightly enough that houses a mile apart can see different line-ups. Why Peoria quotes differ by ZIP covers it; the short version is to run your own address on Medicare.gov’s plan finder and nobody else’s.

If your ended plan was a PPO. Several of the plans that ended in Maricopa County were HMOs, but one of the larger ones was a PPO, and PPO members tend to have chosen that shape deliberately — recent arrivals from a state where PPOs are the norm, people who split the year between here and somewhere else, people who want to see a specialist without a referral. The 2027 county file lists eleven local PPO plans and one regional PPO, from four carriers, so the PPO-to-PPO move exists. But a PPO’s out-of-network benefit is not the same as a supplement’s freedom: it costs more per visit, the plan can still require prior authorization, and the annual cap for out-of-network care is higher than the in-network one. If the reason you wanted a PPO was really “I want to see any doctor, anywhere,” that is the next door, not this one.

Door two: Original Medicare with a supplement and a drug plan

This is the door that opens wider for a discontinued-plan member than for almost anyone else, and in Arizona it opens for a limited time.

Ordinarily, applying for a Medicare Supplement after your first six months on Part B means health questions, and a carrier can decline you or charge more. Arizona has no birthday rule and no annual open window for supplements. A plan leaving Medicare is one of the federal guaranteed-issue situations: from 60 days before your coverage ends to 63 days after — November 1, 2026 through March 4, 2027 — a carrier has to issue you a policy with no medical underwriting. Federal law guarantees Plans A, B, D, G, K and L in this situation (and C or F if you were eligible for Medicare before 2020). Medicare.gov’s current wording goes further, “any Medigap policy that’s sold by an insurance company in your state,” and some carriers do accept guaranteed-issue applications for more than the federal list. Ask the carrier, in writing, which plans it will issue on a non-renewal right before you count on Plan N or a high-deductible G.

Who this door tends to fit:

• Anyone away part of the year. Trilogy at Vistancia and Westbrook Village both hold households that spend four months out of state. A supplement travels with Original Medicare to any doctor in the country who accepts it; an Advantage plan built around Maricopa County covers routine care elsewhere only within whatever its network and out-of-network rules allow.
• Anyone whose specialists are scattered. If the list from step one above has a cardiologist in Sun City, an orthopedist at Arrowhead and an oncologist in Scottsdale, finding one 2027 network that reaches all three is possible but fragile. Original Medicare does not have that problem.
• Households with assets to protect. The Advantage trade is a lower premium for an annual in-network cap that in Maricopa County runs up to $8,900 for 2027. A supplement swaps that for a known monthly premium and, with Plan G, a single yearly deductible. For a household that would rather budget than gamble, that is the point of it. Plan G against Plan N for Arizona is the next read, and the comparison tool runs the arithmetic.

What it costs, structurally: the Part B premium of $202.90 a month in 2026 that you already pay, plus the supplement’s premium, plus a stand-alone Part D plan’s premium. Supplement premiums are set by carrier, age and ZIP and I am not going to type one here; what I will say is that Peoria ZIPs price in the same Maricopa rating area, so the number does not change between 85383 and 85345.

One sequencing note. The supplement application can go in from November 1 and be dated to start January 1; the Part D plan has to be chosen in the Annual Enrollment Period for a January 1 start. Do them together in November, and do not disenroll from your Advantage plan yourself — it ends on its own on December 31, and enrolling in a stand-alone Part D plan is what formally completes the move to Original Medicare.

Door three: doing nothing

If you do nothing, on January 1 you are in Original Medicare, Parts A and B. That is not a disaster — it is the coverage every supplement sits on top of — but three things come with it that you did not choose:

• No drug coverage if your Advantage plan included Part D. After 63 days without creditable drug coverage, Medicare adds a permanent late-enrollment penalty to every future Part D premium. The special period through February 28 exists to prevent exactly this; use it.
• No annual cap. You pay 20% of the Medicare-approved amount for outpatient care, with no ceiling, until you either add a supplement or join a plan.
• No automatic replacement. The default is Original Medicare, not another plan from the same carrier, unless your letter specifically says otherwise.

The only people for whom “do nothing” is a plan are those who intend to be on Original Medicare with a supplement anyway, have applied for it, and have a Part D plan chosen. For them, doing nothing with the Advantage plan is correct — it simply ends.

If you pay IRMAA

A forced plan change does not touch the income-related surcharge. IRMAA is set by Social Security from your tax return two years back and is added to your Part B premium whichever door you take. Two things do carry across: if you had a Part D surcharge, it follows you to whatever drug coverage you choose; and if your income fell since the return Social Security is using, the appeal is a separate conversation with a separate form, unrelated to the plan letter. The IRMAA estimator shows where the brackets sit.

A Peoria calendar from here

• This week. Identify which letter you have. Pull the twelve months of statements and write the doctor list. Decide whether your instinct is door one or door two.
• October 15. Plan finder opens for 2027 enrollment. Run your own ZIP. If door one, check every candidate plan’s 2027 directory against the list, specialists first.
• By October 31. Decide the door. If door two, ask the supplement carriers which plans they issue on a non-renewal right.
• November 1. The Medigap guaranteed-issue window opens. Supplement applications can go in, dated January 1.
• By December 7. Advantage or Part D enrollment submitted for January 1. Keep the confirmation number.
• December 31. The old plan ends. New ID cards should already be in hand; if not, call before the first appointment of January.
• February 28 and March 4. The last days of the special period and the supplement window respectively. Nobody should still be deciding by then, but the doors are open until those dates.

The short version

• You keep Medicare. The plan ends December 31; Parts A and B do not.
• December 7 is the date that matters for a January 1 start. December 8 to February 28 is the safety net, with a gap month if you use it.
• In Peoria, check the network specialists first, then the hospital and the groups inside it, then the 2027 directory, then the prescriptions, then your own ZIP.
• The Medigap door is open November 1 to March 4 with no health questions, and Arizona offers no other way around underwriting. It fits people who travel, whose specialists are scattered, or who would rather budget a premium than carry a cap.
• Doing nothing means Original Medicare on January 1 with no drug plan and no cap. It is only a plan if a supplement and a Part D plan are already arranged.

If you would rather have someone check it for you

Bring the letter, your insurance cards and the pill bottles, and I will run the doctor list against the 2027 networks in your ZIP 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.