Medicare.gov, live: searching 2027 plans. Take-Home Notes, part four
October 1, 2026
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Show Notes
Eddie and Betty's Conversation
Welcome to The American Retirement Advisor. I'm Betty, and Eddie's here with me in the studio today, and we are diving into something that I think trips people up every single year: how to use Medicare.gov to shop for a plan. Not theoretically. Like, open the laptop and do it.
Thanks for having me. And yes, I know, I know, it does not sound like a party, but there are a few things in Ian Schaeffer's piece that made me do a double take, so stay with us.
Ian Schaeffer wrote this as part of a workshop recap series, and it's basically the part of the workshop where the slides stop and someone in the room shouts out their ZIP code and they just... do the search live. In front of everybody.
Which, as a teaching tool, is kind of brilliant. You can tell people the site exists, or you can show a room full of people what happens when you type in three prescriptions and a pharmacy and hit go.
And the presenter, Kyle Jacobs, has this line he delivers when the results come up. Ian quotes it directly: I didn't say it, you said it.
Because the room did the search. The room saw the numbers. Nobody had to take his word for it.
Okay so before we get into how that works, can we just talk about the sheer number of plans? Because I read that and thought I had to be misreading it.
You were not. The team pulled every plan from Medicare.gov on October 1st for two ZIP codes. Scottsdale, 85255: one hundred and one plans. Las Vegas, 89117: eighty-one plans.
That's a lot to sort through.
From eighteen different companies in Scottsdale alone.
I mean, if I walked into an ice cream shop and there were a hundred and one flavors I would just sit down on the floor.
And that is more or less the correct response to Medicare plan shopping without a system.
So the article makes the case that it's the place to start, and the reason is pretty specific, right? It's not just that it's convenient.
The workshop slide puts it plainly: Medicare.gov is the only place that shows every plan available to you. Not some plans, not most plans. Every plan.
Which means if you're calling an insurance company or asking a neighbor, you're getting a slice of the picture.
A pretty small one at that. And the number of plans is growing. The same Scottsdale search in September, for 2026, showed eighty-eight Advantage plans from seventeen companies. For 2027 it's ninety-two Advantage plans from eighteen companies. More choices this year, more reason to search rather than just renew.
And they pulled the data on October 1st, which means they were looking at 2027 plans the first morning they were available.
Ian mentions that specifically. October 1 is the day Medicare.gov switches over to next year's lineup, two weeks before Open Enrollment opens on October 15.
Okay, so walk me through the actual search. Say I want to find a drug plan. How does that work?
The workshop slide has a line I love: it's math. Three things: your drugs, your pharmacy, the yearly cost. You type your ZIP code, choose Medicare drug plan, and then the site walks you through adding each prescription, the dosage, the quantity, how often you take it. Then you pick up to five pharmacies. Then it gives you results sorted by the lowest combined drug plus premium cost for the year.
So it's adding everything up for you. It's not just showing you one piece of the picture.
That's the key part. Because a plan with a low premium might cost you more in total once you add up what you're paying at the pharmacy. The site does that math so you can compare apples to apples.
Now Ian flags something about that. It's not just pick a convenient location?
No, and this is one of those things that sounds like a fine print detail but is real money. The same pill, on the same plan, can cost a different amount depending on which pharmacy counter you're standing at. He references an earlier piece that showed the actual arithmetic on that. So you want to enter your real pharmacy in that step, not just the closest one.
The same drug, same plan, different price depending on where you fill it. That is the kind of thing you'd never know unless someone told you.
Or if you searched and compared. Which is the whole point.
Alright, so that's Part D, the drug plan search. What about Advantage plans? Is that a completely different process?
You switch to that plan type and your drug and pharmacy information carries over. But then there's an order of operations that the workshop presenters have been using for years and they say it hasn't changed.
What's the order?
Doctors first. Then hospitals. Then prescriptions. Then whichever plan has the most matches on all of that. And only then do you look at the benefits.
So the gym membership or the dental or whatever, that's last.
Dead last. Because what good is a plan with great extras if your cardiologist isn't in the network?
Right. Can I keep my doctor has to be question one.
Always. And Medicare.gov has a step where you can search for up to five doctors by name, and each plan card will show you a checkmark or an X for each one. That's the theory.
There's a but coming, I can feel it.
Big but. When they pulled the Maricopa County data on October 1st, none of the 52 standard Advantage plans had doctor information loaded for 2027 yet. Compare that to 49 out of 52 for 2026.
Wait, zero out of 52? On the very first day?
Day one. Which is not a scandal, it's just what day one looks like. The directories should get loaded as the season goes on. But it does mean that right now, confirming your doctor is in a plan means going to each plan's own provider directory website and checking there. And then calling the doctor's office.
Nobody is excited to hear that.
The article is very candid about it. Ian writes that the presenters say out loud what the whole room is thinking: nobody wants to do that. And then they follow it up with: it's also the only way to know.
There is something I respect about just saying the quiet part out loud.
It's a workshop full of adults, not children. They can handle the truth.
The article mentions a grid on the back of the notes sheet they hand out. What is that?
So you've got your list of plans you're considering across the top. Down the side, your primary care doctor, your specialist, your hospital. And you look each one up in each plan's directory and you draw a smiling face if they're in network, an X if they're not.
That's what I appreciate, they didn't overthink the system.
The instruction at the bottom of the slide is three words: repeat until complete. It's not glamorous. It's a grid with emoji. But it works.
You do the grid, you see which plan has the most smiling faces, and that's your frontrunner.
That's your starting point, yes. Then you check the benefits and the costs for that plan specifically.
Now I have to ask about the dental icon thing, because when I read that section I actually laughed out loud.
The little tooth.
So there's this tiny icon on the plan cards, a tiny graphic, and you'd assume that means the plan has dental coverage.
That's the assumption. The article says this is the workshop's favorite gag. And the 2027 data proves why.
Because?
Because when they pulled all 101 Scottsdale plans and all 81 Las Vegas plans on October 1st, the dental flag said not specified on every single one of them.
All of them? Even the ones that definitely have benefits listed somewhere?
Even ones whose own detail pages list cleanings, X-rays, and crowns. The icon tells you essentially nothing. The real information, the actual limits, the copays, what's covered, lives in each plan's Summary of Benefits document.
And that's not even on Medicare.gov, that's on each individual insurance company's website.
For most plans, yes. Ian writes that this is where the presenters sigh and admit you're going to need some help. Which is, again, honest.
A tooth icon that means not specified. I'd almost find that funny if it wasn't people's healthcare.
The site is genuinely useful, it's just not a one-stop-shop for every detail. It's the beginning of the search, not the end.
So what else is missing on day one? Is there more?
Two more things, both flagged as normal for day one of the 2027 plans. Star ratings, which is how Medicare grades the plans on quality, those all read coming soon on every 2027 plan. They get published later in the fall.
So you can't even see how the plan is rated yet.
Not yet. And the doctor directories will fill in as plans upload their information. So the article's advice is to start early and check twice. Don't do the search once in October and call it done.
Which is the opposite of how most people approach this. Most people are either going to ignore it until December or just auto-renew what they had last year.
And auto-renewing feels safe but it's not the same as confirming. Plans can change their networks. Drug lists can change. What worked last year might cost you more this year or drop your doctor entirely.
So the homework the article sends you home with is pretty specific. It's not just 'go look at Medicare.gov' in a vague way.
Fill in the grid for three plans: the one you have now and the two that came out on top in your search. And for every box where you got a smiling face, call the doctor's office and ask one question.
What do you ask them?
Will you be in this plan's network in 2027? Not are you in network now. In 2027.
Because a doctor being covered this year doesn't guarantee anything about next year.
Contracts change. And if you've gone through all this work to find a plan that supposedly covers your provider and then find out in January that it doesn't, that is a painful outcome that a single phone call could have prevented.
That question you raised earlier about the future network year is the one I'm writing down.
That's the whole ballgame, honestly.
Now I have a question that I bet some listeners are sitting with. This is a lot of steps. Pulling directories from multiple websites, calling doctor's offices, doing the grid, reading Summaries of Benefits on different company sites. What if someone just can't do all of that on their own?
That's where the advisors come in. The article itself lists a phone number for that: 602-281-3898. And the workshop walks through all of this live.
And those are at no cost to you, right?
At no cost. Ian mentions two coming up, one in Glendale at the Foothills Library and one in Scottsdale at the Mustang Library. You can register at 123easymedicare.com or call 877-220-1089.
So you can either do the search yourself using exactly what Ian's laid out, or you can walk into a library and do it with someone who does this every day. Both are good options.
And for anything that gets into the really specific details of your situation, like which plan type makes sense for where you are right now, that's a conversation for an advisor, not a podcast.
Said the numbers guy, with appropriate humility.
I know my lane.
So let me pull the key pieces together so people have something to hold onto. We talked earlier about how Medicare.gov gives you that complete picture, every plan in your area, and I just keep coming back to how important that is. In Scottsdale alone, that's a hundred and one plans for 2027. And the search costs you nothing, and it does the math on your total costs for the year.
And the order for Advantage plan shopping is doctors first, hospitals second, prescriptions third, and the bells and whistles come last. The little tooth icon cannot be trusted. The star ratings aren't up yet. And day one data is a starting point, not a final answer.
And that one phone call really does bring everything together -- asking the doctor's office that forward-looking question we talked about earlier, the one about whether they'll be in your plan's network in 2027, not just right now.
That's the one. That's the call worth making.
Alright. If today's episode made you want to actually open Medicare.gov and try this, that is exactly what Ian Schaeffer intended when he wrote it. Do the search. Fill in the grid. Make the call to your doctor's office. And if you want a real person in your corner for any of it, the team at American Retirement Advisors is there. Call them at 602-281-3898, or head to 123easymedicare.com. You've got the information. Use it.