Medicare Advantage in NYC 2027: Who Leads Each Borough and How Plans Rate

Medicare Advantage is the private-plan way of getting Medicare: one card, a network, usually drug coverage built in. In New York City its reach differs sharply by borough. We joined CMS enrollment, rating and plan files, most of them released this month, to show, for each borough, how many people with Medicare are in an Advantage plan, which companies enroll them, how those companies are rated for 2027, and how many people are in a plan that ends on December 31.

This page is about the market, not about which plan is right for you. That depends on your doctors and drugs, which no rating captures. How to make the choice itself.

How much of each borough is in Medicare Advantage

CMS counts, for every county, the people eligible for Medicare and the people enrolled in an Advantage or other private health plan. The October 2026 file is the latest.

In the Bronx, 169,507 of 237,893 people with Medicare are in an Advantage plan: about seven in ten. Queens and Brooklyn sit above the state figure; Manhattan and Staten Island are below half. Across the city, 861,095 of 1,484,867 people with Medicare have chosen a private plan.

The Bronx share ranks eighth of 62 counties in the state. The seven above it are Monroe, at 77.19%, and six neighbors in the Rochester and Buffalo areas. At the other end are the suburbs: Nassau at 33.46%, Rockland at 32.68% and Suffolk, the lowest, at 29.86%. All 62 counties.

A large part of the city’s Advantage enrollment is in special needs plans, most of them for people who have both Medicare and Medicaid. They hold 60.2% of city Advantage members in CMS’s October file, and 67.5% in the Bronx. Employer and union retiree plans hold 10.0% citywide and 18.2% on Staten Island. Having Medicare and Medicaid together.

Who enrolls each borough

CMS reports enrollment by contract and county, and names each contract’s parent organization. We added contracts up by parent.

Healthfirst, a plan founded by New York City hospitals, leads in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. Staten Island is the exception: there Aetna is first, with Healthfirst second. The three national companies, CVS Health (Aetna), UnitedHealth and Centene (Wellcare), together hold more than a third of the city.

Organization shares are of Advantage enrollees each borough reports in the CMS contract file. In Queens, UnitedHealthcare and Aetna differ by 33 members.

How the city’s plans are rated for 2027

Every October CMS rates each Advantage contract from 1 to 5 stars on measures of care, member experience, complaints and drug services. One rating covers every plan in a contract. The 2027 ratings, published October 8, 2026, are the ones you see in the Plan Finder this fall.

The ten largest contracts by city enrollment. Wellcare’s H4868 has no 2027 rating; its plans are consolidated into another Wellcare contract, H5599, which is rated 3 stars. All 39 contracts with city members.

The largest contract in the city fell a full star. Healthfirst’s H3359 covers 38.00% of city Advantage members, so its rating nearly sets the city’s average. Weighted by October enrollment, the city’s rating is 3.62 for 2027 against 4.03 for 2026 on the same contracts. Leave H3359 out and the change is small: 3.72 to 3.69. The CMS summary table gives the rating, not a reason. The scores on each underlying measure are in the CMS data tables.

The shift is sharpest where Healthfirst is largest. In the Bronx, the share of Advantage members in a 4-star-or-better contract falls from 68.6% to 27.3%. Staten Island, where Healthfirst is smaller, has the highest 2027 share, 48.6%. Citywide, 19.6% of members are in contracts rated below 3.5 stars.

VNS Health moved the other way, from 3.5 to 4 stars. Two contracts with city members are rated 5 stars for 2027: Anthem’s H6988 and UnitedHealthcare’s H2292. A 5-star plan opens a once-a-year switch from December 8, 2026 to November 30, 2027, if one is offered where you live. The Medicare windows.

Plans that end on December 31

CMS’s 2027 plan crosswalk lists what happens to every 2026 plan. We matched it to October enrollment.

New York City was spared most of this year’s exits. Statewide, 197,699 Advantage members are in terminated plans, 9.1% of the total, most of them outside the city. In the city, 13 plans with members are ending. The largest are Aetna Medicare Elite (PPO), with 5,487 members, all in Manhattan; Elderplan Flex (HMO-POS), with 4,791; and HealthSpring True Choice (PPO), with 1,871. Four of the 13 are plans for people with both Medicare and Medicaid: three EmblemHealth VIP Dual plans and Aetna’s Partial Dual Care, 2,424 members together. The full list.

Consolidation is different. Your plan merges into another plan of the same company and you are moved automatically, with that plan’s benefits, network and drug list. That applies to 31,468 city members, mostly in Wellcare plans moving into its H5599 contract. One more Wellcare plan, Fidelis Dual Liberty Sync, with 15,680 city members, is split: CMS lists part of it as consolidated and part as terminated, and the crosswalk does not say which counties go which way. Its members should read their letter closely. If your plan is leaving.

What it means for you

Methodology

Data. Four CMS files, downloaded October 16, 2026: the State/County Penetration file for October 2026; Monthly Enrollment by Contract/Plan/State/County (CPSC) for October 2026; the 2027 and 2026 Star Ratings data tables (2027 released October 8, 2026; 2026 summary as updated July 22, 2026); and the 2027 plan crosswalk of October 1, 2026. Boroughs are counties: Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens and Richmond.

Penetration is CMS’s figure: enrolled divided by eligible. It counts all Advantage and other private health plans, including cost plans, PACE and employer plans.

Shares by organization use the CPSC file, limited to Advantage and other health plan contracts (stand-alone drug plans excluded). CMS blanks any contract-county cell with 10 or fewer people, so the file reports 852,881 city members against 861,095 in the penetration file, a gap of under 1%. Shares are of the reported total.

Star ratings. We used each contract’s 2027 overall rating, or its Part C rating where no overall rating exists. Averages are weighted by each contract’s October 2026 city enrollment; the 2026 comparison uses the same enrollment and the same contracts. Contracts with no 2027 rating, 3.6% of city members, are left out of averages.

Exits. A plan counts as terminated when every crosswalk row for it is “Terminated/Non-renewed Contract”. Plans with both terminated and consolidated rows are reported separately as split. October enrollment is a snapshot; people can still leave a plan before December 31.

Download the data: nyc-medicare-advantage-2027.csv, one row per borough plus the city and state, with contracts, organizations by borough, terminated plans and all 62 counties. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. Please credit: NYC Med News, “Medicare Advantage in NYC 2027,” October 16, 2026, from CMS data.