Which of Your Plans Just Fell Out of the Four-Star Club?

Every star between one and five is a marketing number except one. The move from 3.5 to 4.0 is the only one attached to money, because at 4.0 the county benchmark a Medicare Advantage contract gets paid against goes up by five percent, and below 4.0 it does not.

CMS posted the 2027 Star Ratings data tables on Thursday. The fact sheet says what they are for in one line: the ratings "will impact 2028 MA quality bonus payments."

So we pulled the per-contract summary file, matched it against the restated 2026 ratings, and counted the crossings. There are 468 Medicare Advantage contracts with a numeric overall rating in both years, covering 34,662,379 members as of the September enrollment file.

72 of them were at four stars or better last year and are below four now. They carry 4,916,153 members.

35 went the other way, carrying 4,752,056.

Humana Got It All Back

Those two numbers are nearly the same size, and almost none of the same companies are in them (chart below).

Humana has twelve contracts crossing up and one crossing down. The twelve hold 3,874,959 members, and one contract is most of that: H5216, Humana Insurance Company's local PPO, 2,366,117 members, 3.5 stars in 2026 and 4.0 in 2027.

No other contract in the release moved the line under anywhere near that many people.

UnitedHealth Group ran it in reverse: twelve contracts fell below four, holding 1,622,990 members, against one that climbed.

CVS Health lost the line on eight contracts and 715,711 members. Health Care Service Corporation lost four and 452,565, including a HealthSpring contract that went 4.5 to 3.5 in one year.

Healthfirst lost one contract and 357,072 members with it.