What the Letter Leaves Out, part one. Every fall, your plan's Annual Notice of Change is supposed to be the one document that tells you what is different next year. This week, while our team was preparing for our client workshops, I read one of those letters closely, and I could not find either deductible in it: not the one for medical care and not the one for drugs. That does not mean the plan has none. It means the letter did not make it easy. And some of what the letter leaves out, Medicare.gov cannot fill in yet either: as of October 4, its 2027 doctor information was still not loaded for any of Maricopa's 52 standard Advantage plans. So between now and the Annual Enrollment Period, which opens October 15, I am going to take one thing a day that the letter leaves out, or leaves hard to find, and show you where to get the real answer. We start with deductibles, because this year there are more of them.
Are there really more deductibles for 2027?
Yes. Maricopa County has 52 standard Advantage plans, meaning the ones that are not special needs plans, in both 2026 and 2027, which makes for a clean comparison. In the Medicare.gov plan data we pulled, 11 of the 52 had a medical deductible in 2026. For 2027, 16 of the 52 do, and one more had not posted its number yet when we checked on October 1. On the drug side, the most a plan can charge for a drug deductible rose from $615 in 2026 to "no more than $700" in 2027, and 6 of the 9 stand-alone drug plans in Maricopa set theirs at the full $700. A plan can keep the same name and the same premium and still add a line like this.
How many deductibles can one plan have?
More than one. An Advantage plan with drug coverage can have a deductible for medical care and a separate one for prescriptions, and they are counted separately: money you spend toward one does not count toward the other. Drug deductibles also have a wrinkle the handbook spells out: "In some plans that do have a deductible, drugs on some tiers are covered before the deductible." So a low-cost generic may not wait for the deductible while a brand-name drug does. If you are on Original Medicare with a Supplement and a drug plan, your deductibles live in three places instead: Part A, Part B, and the drug plan.
Where do I find my plan's real deductibles?
Three places, in this order. First, the government's model letter has a summary table near the front with a row for the deductible, and our earlier piece on reading that letter like a spec sheet shows the layout; if your letter has that row, start there. Second, look the plan up on Medicare.gov's plan search, where each plan's details show its deductibles for 2027. Third, the plan's own Summary of Benefits, which also says which services the medical deductible applies to, because not every service waits for it. If the three disagree, call the plan and ask for both numbers for 2027.
What should I write down?
Two lines, side by side for 2026 and 2027: my medical deductible and my drug deductible. If either one went from $0 to something, or went up, write next to it which of your regular services or prescriptions it applies to. A new $500 medical deductible that only applies to hospital stays is a very different thing from one that applies to every specialist visit. That is the part no summary table can answer for you.
What a Certified Medicare Planner® does differently
They read past the summary. A planner pulls both deductibles for your plan and for the plans you might move to, checks which of your own services and prescriptions each one applies to, and puts the 2026 and 2027 numbers next to each other before you ever sit down. This week, that is exactly the work happening in our office ahead of our client workshops. The advisors are at 602-281-3898.
Tomorrow in What the Letter Leaves Out: your worst-case year. The letter lists an out-of-pocket maximum, but not what a bad year costs you all in. I will do the arithmetic.
Continue the Series
Next: What's your worst-case year? What the Letter Leaves Out, part two →Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only. It is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise representative of Medicare or the federal Medicare program. American Retirement Advisors is not a government agency. For official Medicare information, visit medicare.gov or call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).