By Jessica Hall
Some Medicare Advantage plans have been quitting unprofitable markets and trimming extra benefits
With 35.5 million subscribers, Medicare Advantage represents 51% of the total Medicare market of roughly 69.6 million subscribers.
The growth in Medicare Advantage, the private-plan alternative to traditional Medicare, has slowed in 2026 as plans quit unprofitable markets and trimmed benefits, but subscriber gains haven't faltered as badly as expected.
Medicare Advantage plans had 35.5 million enrollees as of February 2026, up 3.2% from 34.4 million enrollees as of February 2025, according to data from the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services. That's down from growth that ranged from from 7% to 10% a year between 2017 and 2024.
&#34;The most dire predictions didn't come to pass. The market remains fairly robust,&#34; said Meredith Freed, senior policy manager with KFF's program on Medicare policy. &#34;But the pace of growth slowed from prior years.&#34;
Medicare Advantage plans offer extra benefits such as vision and dental coverage, but those come with the trade-off of a limited choice of doctors and requirements for specialist referrals. Medicare Advantage also caps annual out-of-pocket costs.
Read: Most Medicare Advantage plans are free upfront. You still might not be able to afford one.
Growth of any kind countered the Medicare Advantage plans' own projections released in October. Those forecasts called for total industry subscriber numbers to fall to 34 million in 2026, a decrease from 34.9 million in 2025, according to a disclosure by the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services.
&#34;After years of rapid growth of Medicare Advantage, we might be starting to see sort of a rightsizing of this market,&#34; Freed said. &#34;Medicare Advantage is still a pretty attractive option for a lot of people. It's still going to be the choice of a lot of people, but over time there will likely be an equilibrium or plateau of enrollment.&#34;
The cooling growth rate comes as the insurers behind the Medicare Advantage market have been exiting certain unprofitable markets or discontinuing plans amid higher-than-expected medical expenses among subscribers and changes in government payments that have squeezed margins. Some plans also have been trimming extra over-the-counter benefits such as meal benefits and transportation, Freed said.
With 35.5 million subscribers, Medicare Advantage represents 51% of the total Medicare market of roughly 69.6 million subscribers.
Nationally, 2.9 million beneficiaries, or roughly 1 in 10 Medicare Advantage enrollees, were forced to change their insurance coverage due to their prior plan exiting the market, according to a new signed editorial in JAMA. In some states the disruption was severe. In Vermont, for example, 92% of Medicare Advantage enrollees were forced out of their plan and had to find a new one or switch to traditional Medicare.
Between 2018 and 2024, the mean rate of forced disenrollment was 1% a year. That rate jumped to 6.9% in 2025 and is expected to reach about 10% in 2026, according to JAMA.
Read: Here's what's really stopping Medicare Advantage from covering all of America's seniors
&#34;Major insurers have been paring back their MA offerings, including by exiting some markets and make some plans less generous. Insurers have generally attributed those changes to weaker financial performance, which seems to reflect both underlying market dynamics and some recent changes in federal policy aimed at bringing payments to MA plans more in line with what the law requires,&#34; said Matthew Fiedler, senior fellow at the Center on Health Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Medicare Advantage is costly for taxpayers. The government paid 22% more per Medicare Advantage enrollee, or about $83 billion a year more, than if the same person had been enrolled in traditional Medicare, according to a 2024 report by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the independent federal agency that advises the U.S. Congress.
The government has said it would curb reimbursement. For the calendar year 2027, CMS recently proposed a net average year-over-year payment increase that would be roughly flat at 0.09%, or about $700 million more for Medicare Advantage plans.
Medicare Advantage also may be seeing some slowdown as the market matures.
&#34;It's also natural to expect MA's growth to slow as it gets bigger and the pool of people it can lure away from traditional Medicare shrinks. While I suspect that's not the main factor behind the recent slowdown, it may be playing some role,&#34; Fiedler said.
The overall market for Medicare will continue to rise as about 11,000 people turn 65 every day and become eligible to choose either traditional Medicare or Medicare Advantage.
Over the longer term, the Congressional Budget Office has projected that Medicare Advantage will control about 64% of the market by 2034. Medicare Advantage had just 25% of the market in 2010.
-Jessica Hall
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones &amp; Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
02-20-26 1310ET

Medicare Advantage's growth has slowed in 2026, with 35.5 million enrollees, a 3.2% increase from 2025, down from previous annual growth rates of 7-10%. Plans are exiting unprofitable markets and trimming benefits due to rising medical costs and changes in government payments. The forced disenrollment rate has surged, with 1 in 10 enrollees needing to switch plans. Major insurers are reducing offerings, attributing changes to financial performance and federal policy adjustments. Despite the slowdown, Medicare Advantage is projected to control 64% of the market by 2034, as the overall Medicare market continues to grow.

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Medicare Advantage's once-blistering growth dropped in 2026. Here's what that means.