Cigna HealthSpring Medicare Advantage Review 2027: Half the Counties, the Weakest Ratings

This article is for general educational purposes only and is not insurance or medical advice. We are not affiliated with the U.S. government, Medicare, Cigna, HealthSpring or HCSC. For official information, visit Medicare.gov or call 1-800-MEDICARE. See our Medical & Financial Disclaimer for details.

If you are looking for Cigna Medicare Advantage, the first thing to know is that Cigna no longer sells it. On March 19, 2025, Health Care Service Corporation completed its purchase of Cigna’s Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplement, Part D and CareAllies businesses, and those plans now trade under the HealthSpring name. HCSC says the deal took it to 26.5 million people, including 4.3 million Medicare members.

Nothing about your coverage changes when a plan changes hands mid-contract — benefits are filed with CMS for the plan year and cannot be rewritten because the letterhead did. What does change is who you are dealing with, and which company’s decisions shape next year’s plans.

We counted every HealthSpring plan in the CMS file for 2027, matched each one to the star ratings CMS published on October 8, 2026, and set the result beside the 2026 lineup. A year ago HealthSpring had the sharpest split of any insurer we looked at: the best cost protection of the large insurers and the worst quality scores. For 2027 the ratings have fallen further, the cost protection is now roughly market average, and the company sells in half as many counties.

The Numbers

From the CMS plan file	HealthSpring (HCSC) 2027	All Medicare Advantage plans 2027	HealthSpring (HCSC) 2026
Distinct plans on sale	200	5,522	283
States and territories	24	—	31
Counties served	478 of 3,131 (15%)	3,131	948 of 3,147 (30%)
Plans with no monthly premium at all	69.6%	69.7%	76.5%
Median in-network out-of-pocket limit	$7,150	$7,100	$5,900
Plans capped at the legal maximum ($9,850 in 2027, $9,250 in 2026)	23.5%	28.2%	10.2%
Mean overall star rating	3.24	3.86	3.62
Rated plans at 4 stars or better	4.6%	61.2%	39.7%
Special needs plans	51	1,969	51

The Footprint: Half the Counties of a Year Ago

The biggest change for 2027 is not a rating. HCSC sells Medicare Advantage in 478 counties for 2027, down from 948, and in 24 states instead of 31. Its catalog fell from 283 plans to 200. Most of that is the Blue Cross side of the company: HCSC is also a Blue Cross licensee, and for 2026 it sold 59 Blue-branded Medicare Advantage plans of its own in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. For 2027 it sells five.

If you were in one of the plans that is not coming back, you should have received an annual notice or a non-renewal letter, and you have a guaranteed right to choose something else. Our guide to switching Medicare Advantage plans covers the dates. For most people reading this, though, the practical point is simpler: HealthSpring is not sold where you live. 478 counties is 15% of the country.

The Cost Protection: No Longer the Best, Still Better Than Average

The out-of-pocket maximum is the number that decides what a bad year costs you, and it is the one insurers are quietest about. Federal rules let a plan set its in-network limit as high as $9,850 for 2027, up from $9,250, and across the market 28.2% of plans go right to that ceiling.

For 2026 HealthSpring put just 10.2% of its plans there, the lowest share of any insurer we counted by a wide margin. For 2027 it is 23.5%. That is still below the market, but no longer exceptional: Kaiser is at 21.4% and the Blue-branded plans at 22.0%, with Humana at 26.9%, UnitedHealthcare at 30.8% and Aetna at 35.0%. Its median limit, $7,150, is now slightly above the market’s $7,100, where a year ago it was $600 below.

The premium advantage has gone the same way. 69.6% of its 2027 plans charge nothing beyond the Part B premium, almost exactly the market’s 69.7%. A year ago it was 76.5% against 56.4%.

The Ratings: The Weakest We Have Counted, and Falling

Star ratings measure things you feel over a year rather than at the point of sale: whether screenings happen, whether medication is managed, whether the plan answers, how appeals go. For 2026 HealthSpring’s plans averaged 3.62 and 39.7% reached four stars, already the lowest of the large insurers we counted. On the 2027 ratings its plans average 3.24 against a market mean of 3.86, and just nine of its 194 rated plans — 4.6% — reach four stars, against 61.2% market-wide. They are sold in 21 counties.

That matters beyond the score itself. Plans rated four stars or higher earn bonus payments from CMS, and those payments help fund cost-sharing and extra benefits in later years. A company with almost no four-star plans has less of that money to work with, which is consistent with what has already happened to HealthSpring’s cost protection and footprint between 2026 and 2027.

It is also worth noting what the rating attaches to. CMS rates contracts, not brands, so the company average tells you less about the specific plan in your county than the plan’s own rating does. Ours is a plan-level average across the 194 HealthSpring plans with a published 2027 rating; the one that applies to you is on the Medicare Plan Finder next to the plan itself. Our guide to how star ratings are built explains what the score is actually made of.

Drug Coverage: Its Strongest Remaining Point

The out-of-pocket limit covers medical care. Prescriptions have their own deductible, and on that HealthSpring still compares well. Of the 137 ordinary plans with drug coverage sold under the HealthSpring name for 2027, here is how they sit against the 3,196 such plans in the whole market.

Plans with drug coverage, 2027	HealthSpring	All ordinary plans
Median drug deductible	$500 (was $250)	$650 (was $440)
Deductible at the $700 maximum	20.4%	36.0%
No drug deductible	0% (was 9.0%)	10.5%
$0 for the drug part of the premium	92.7%	71.7%

Our own count from the CMS Landscape files for 2026 and 2027, excluding special needs plans.

The direction is the same as everywhere else for 2027 — the typical deductible doubled, and the plans with no deductible at all disappeared — but HealthSpring started lower and is still $150 under the market’s typical plan. Combined with the near-universal $0 drug premium, that is the clearest reason left to look at one of its plans if you take regular prescriptions. Check the formulary and the tier your medicines sit on before you count on the saving: a low deductible is worth nothing on a drug the plan does not list.

Extra Benefits: The Deepest Cuts of Any Large Insurer

Extras are filed separately with CMS, plan by plan, in the PBP Benefits files. Comparing HealthSpring’s ordinary plans in the 2026 and 2027 filings shows where the money was taken out.

Share of plans with the benefit	HealthSpring 2026	HealthSpring 2027	Market 2027
Over-the-counter allowance	70.6%	44.5%	58.3%
Typical OTC amount per year	$200	$120	$200
Meal benefit	90.4%	61.0%	45.0%
Transportation to medical appointments	29.4%	18.5%	19.0%
Hearing aids	100%	80.8%	93.7%
Typical eyewear allowance per year	$200	$100	$200

Our own count from the CMS PBP Benefits files. “Typical” is the median among plans that file a dollar amount.

A year ago HealthSpring was above the market on nearly every extra. For 2027 it is below it on the over-the-counter card, hearing aids and eyewear, and only the meal benefit is still more common than elsewhere. It fits a pattern: an insurer that has halved its footprint and lost its bonus-earning ratings has less money to spend on the things that are not required. If you are a current member, compare the extras section of your Annual Notice of Change line by line with what you had in 2026.

What the Ownership Change Means for You

Practically, two things.

Your benefits for a plan year are unaffected by a sale: they are filed with CMS and the sale does not reopen them. The name on your card, your member portal and the number you call will change or have changed, so paperwork that says Cigna and paperwork that says HealthSpring may both be current — keep both until you are sure.

And corporate ownership tells you nothing you can feel as a member. For 2026 the same parent company sold against itself under two brands in Texas and Illinois; for 2027 it has withdrawn almost all of its Blue-branded plans and kept HealthSpring. Compare the plans, not the companies. We go through why the Blue name in particular tells you so little in our Blue Cross review.

Who It Suits

It suits someone in one of its 478 counties who finds a HealthSpring plan with a clearly lower out-of-pocket limit than the alternatives at the same premium, and who has checked that specific plan’s 2027 rating. That trade still exists plan by plan; it just no longer describes the company as a whole. If Aetna is the other name on your shortlist, our Aetna versus HealthSpring comparison sets the two side by side.

It suits you less if you are managing several conditions and need the plan to be good at coordination and approvals, which is precisely what the weak ratings measure. It is also, by design, an HMO-first insurer: 114 of its 200 plans for 2027 are HMOs against 28 PPOs, so out-of-network flexibility is limited. Our HMO versus PPO comparison covers what that means in practice.

Two smaller groups are worth naming. If you take several regular prescriptions and want a low drug deductible with no drug premium, a HealthSpring plan with your medicines on its formulary can be one of the cheaper ways to fill them in 2027 — typically $500 of deductible, against $685 to $700 on the typical plan from Aetna, Humana or UnitedHealthcare. If instead you picked HealthSpring in 2026 for the over-the-counter card, the meal benefit or the glasses allowance, assume those have changed until your Annual Notice of Change proves otherwise, and compare the extras of the other plans in your county during the Annual Enrollment Period, which runs until December 7.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cigna still selling Medicare Advantage? No. HCSC completed its purchase of Cigna’s Medicare businesses on March 19, 2025, and the plans now trade as HealthSpring.

Is HealthSpring leaving my area? It may be. For 2027 it sells in 478 counties, down from 948. If your plan is not renewing you will have been told by letter, and the Medicare Plan Finder shows what is sold at your ZIP code.

Are HealthSpring plans cheap? About as cheap as the market for 2027: 69.6% of them charge nothing beyond the Part B premium, against 69.7% of plans market-wide.

What is the catch? Quality scores. Its 2027 plans average 3.24 stars against a market mean of 3.86, and fewer than one in twenty reach four stars. That is the lowest of the large insurers we have counted.

Does HealthSpring still have the best out-of-pocket limits? Not for 2027. 23.5% of its plans sit at the legal maximum, below the market’s 28.2% but above Kaiser and the Blue-branded plans. For 2026 it was 10.2%, the best of any large insurer.

Are HealthSpring’s drug plans any good? On cost, yes. Its typical 2027 drug deductible is $500 against $650 for the market, and 92.7% of its plans with drug coverage charge nothing for the drug part of the premium. What you can’t tell from the file is whether your own medications are on its formulary, which is the first thing to check.

Did HealthSpring cut its extra benefits? Yes, across more benefits than any other large insurer we counted. Its plans with an over-the-counter card fell from 70.6% to 44.5%, its typical eyewear allowance halved to $100 a year, and one in five of its plans no longer covers hearing aids.

Bottom Line

For 2026 HealthSpring was the clearest example in this market of an insurer good at the thing nobody shops on and weak at the thing everybody quotes. For 2027 it has given up most of the first and fallen further on the second, while selling in half as many places. Its out-of-pocket protection is still a little better than average; its star ratings are the weakest of any large insurer by a wide margin.

If it is sold where you live, do not dismiss a specific plan out of hand, and do not take one on the strength of last year’s reputation. Look up that plan’s own out-of-pocket limit and its own 2027 star rating, and compare both against what else is sold in your county.

What We Counted for HealthSpring

The HealthSpring figures above are our own count of the 200 distinct plans CMS lists under Health Care Service Corporation in the CY2027 Landscape file, set beside the 283 it listed in the CY2026 file, both in their September 2026 versions. They include HCSC’s Blue-branded plans — 59 for 2026, five for 2027. The 2027 star figures come from matching each plan’s contract to its overall rating in the 2027 Star Ratings data tables published on October 8, 2026, and cover the 194 plans that carry one; the shares at the ceiling and the median limits are counted across all plans.

The market column beside them is the same count applied to all 5,522 plans in the 2027 file, and the other insurers named here were counted the same way on the same date. What we keep, what we exclude, and why a share of plans is not a share of members, are set out in full on our Editorial Methodology page.

Sources

• CY2027 and CY2026 Medicare Advantage and Part D Landscape files — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, September 2026 versions. Source for the plan counts, states and counties served, premium shares, out-of-pocket limits including the $9,850 ceiling for 2027, the 2026 star figures, the Blue-branded plan counts and plan-type mix, for HealthSpring and for every insurer compared with it. All calculations are our own, by the method above.
• 2027 Star Ratings Data Tables — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, published October 8, 2026. Source for every 2027 plan-level star figure, matched contract by contract.
• HCSC Completes the Acquisition of The Cigna Group’s Medicare and CareAllies Businesses — Health Care Service Corporation. Source for the March 19, 2025, closing date, the businesses transferred, and the 26.5 million people and 4.3 million Medicare members served after the deal.
• Medicare Advantage in 2026: Premiums, Out-of-Pocket Limits, Supplemental Benefits and Prior Authorization — KFF. Source for the $9,250 statutory in-network out-of-pocket limit for 2026.
• PBP Benefits – 2027 and PBP Benefits – 2026 — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The benefit filings each plan submits. Source for the extra-benefit table (our own count of ordinary plans sold under the HealthSpring name, and of all ordinary plans for the market column).

All figures on this page were checked against the sources above on October 12, 2026; the drug-coverage and extra-benefit tables were added on October 17, 2026, from the CMS Landscape and PBP Benefits files. Plan availability changes; confirm current details on Medicare.gov before enrolling.

Disclaimer: Plan figures reflect 2027 and 2026 data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and vary by state, county and plan. Always confirm current details directly with Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or a licensed agent before making a decision.