The upheaval in the Medicare Advantage market is chasing one insurance company out of the market, frustrating another, helping a third increase sales of a Medicare Advantage plan alternative, and making consumers hungry for advice.
That picture emerged from the conference calls insurers and brokers held this week to talk about their earnings for the fourth quarter of 2025.
The companies streamed the calls online and posted recordings on their websites.
What it means: Advisors who work with retirees had better be prepared to talk to them about their health insurance problems.
Medicare Advantage issuers' perspective: Medicare Advantage plans fill in the many holes in "Original Medicare" coverage.
Molina Healthcare — a company best known for providing Medicaid plans and individual commercial coverage aimed at users of the Affordable Care Act public exchange system — announced Thursday that it will leave the main, "MAPD" part of the Medicare Advantage program in 2027. MAPD plans offer relatively high-income enrollees Medicare Advantage medical coverage together with prescription drug coverage.
Molina will still offer Medicare Advantage plans aimed at the low-income older people who also qualify for Medicaid.
Molina now has about 230,000 Medicare plan enrollees.
"We have determined that the MAPD product does not align with our strategic shift to focus exclusively on dual-eligible members in Medicare," Joseph Zubretsky, Molina's chief executive officer, said during his company's earnings call.
Andrew Asher, the chief financial officer at Centene, another carrier with a focus on the Medicaid and Medicare plan markets, expressed more happiness about its Medicare Advantage plan business but blasted the low reimbursement level increase that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees Medicare, has proposed for 2027.
"We will provide CMS comments on the disappointing 2027 advanced notice Medicare rate, which will likely cut into seniors' benefits and product selection," Asher said.
A Medicare supplement insurance issuer: Retirees can also use another type of product, Medicare supplement insurance, or Medigap insurance, to fill in Original Medicare holes.
Gary Bhojwani, the CEO of CNO Financial, a Medigap issuer, reported that the strength of the company's new Medigap product and turmoil at Medicare Advantage helped the company double Medigap sales in the fourth quarter.
"Our results reflect a growing shift in consumer preferences from Medicare Advantage to Medicare supplement as many of the leading MA carriers pare back plans and benefits, reversing a decade-long trend," Bhojwani said.
A broker's perspective: SelectQuote was able to increase the number of client Medicare Advantage policies approved during the latest quarter by 4%, to 257,279, in spite of the program chaos.
The estimated lifetime value of commissions per approved policy fell just 4%, to $874.
"Ahead of the season, we identified a subset of policies with higher change potential and anticipated coverage gaps based on each specific individual," Timothy Danker, SelectQuote's CEO, told the analysts listening to his company's call. "In effect, we pulled forward as much of the work and disruption as possible. The end result is that SelectQuote is a more valuable broker partner for both the policyholder and the carrier, especially in dynamic seasons like the past few years."
But one national carrier "significantly cut their strategic marketing budget across all distribution channel partners, including SelectQuote," Danker said.
The percentage of all Medicare Advantage plans canceled increased to 7%, from a typical percentage of 1%, and "the majority of our remaining beneficiaries saw a negative impact to at least one of their planned benefits on their legacy plans," Danker said. "This industry-wide dynamic created a market backdrop of elevated consumer shopping and engagement."
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