Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicare Advantage Review 2027: There Is No Such Company

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, or any Blue Cross Blue Shield company. For official information, visit Medicare.gov or call 1-800-MEDICARE. See our Medical & Financial Disclaimer for details.

Every other review on this site is about a company. This one cannot be, because Blue Cross Blue Shield is not a company. It is a brand shared by independent, locally operated businesses, and in Medicare Advantage that distinction is not a technicality — it is the whole answer to the question you came here with.

We went through the CMS plan file for 2027 and counted the Medicare Advantage plans sold under a Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Anthem or Highmark name, and matched each one to the star ratings CMS published on October 8, 2026. There are 509 of them, down from 565 a year earlier, and they belong to 19 separate parent organizations. Asking whether Blue Cross is good is like asking whether a franchise is good: the answer depends entirely on which one is in your town.

Who Actually Sells the Blue Plans

These are the largest owners of Blue-branded Medicare Advantage plans for 2027, by the number of distinct plans each one offers, with the 2026 count beside them.

Parent organization	Blue-branded plans, 2027	2026
Elevance Health (Anthem)	221	212
Highmark Health	108	113
Capital Blue Cross	35	30
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan	24	27
Blue Shield of California	20	15
Independence Health Group	17	17
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina	14	15
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana	12	15
Blue Cross of Idaho	8	8
Health Care Service Corporation	5	59

Those are ten of the nineteen. They do not share a network, a formulary, a service center or a star rating. A member in Pennsylvania and a member in Louisiana holding cards with the same logo are customers of different businesses with different results. The biggest single change for 2027 is at the bottom of the table: Health Care Service Corporation, which sold 59 Blue-branded plans in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas for 2026, sells five for 2027.

What the Blue Plans Look Like Taken Together

Aggregate figures for a group this loose should be read as a description of the brand’s footprint, not as a verdict on any one plan. With that caveat, here is how the 509 compare with the market, and with the Blue plans of a year earlier.

From the CMS plan file	Blue-branded plans 2027	All Medicare Advantage plans 2027	Blue-branded plans 2026
Distinct plans on sale	509	5,522	565
Rated plans at 4 stars or better	47.5%	61.2%	52.0%
Mean overall star rating	3.77	3.86	3.81
Plans with no monthly premium at all	54.3%	69.7%	49.4%
Median in-network out-of-pocket limit	$6,750	$7,100	$6,500
Plans capped at the legal maximum ($9,850 in 2027, $9,250 in 2026)	22.0%	28.2%	20.2%
Special needs plans	119	1,969	116

The pattern is clearer for 2027 than it was a year ago. On star ratings the Blue plans sit below the market — 47.5% at four stars against 61.2% — and they are less often free, 54.3% against 69.7%. On cost protection they are better than the market: a median out-of-pocket limit of $6,750 against $7,100, and fewer plans parked at the legal ceiling. Nothing here says avoid, and nothing here says choose. That is what you would expect from an average of nineteen unrelated companies, and it is why the aggregate is not the number to decide on.

One figure is worth pulling out. Only 22.0% of Blue-branded plans sit at the $9,850 legal maximum, against 28.2% of plans generally — so on the measure that decides what a bad year costs, the Blue plans are, on average, a little more protective than the field. Average is still the wrong word to make a decision on, but it is a better starting bias than the reverse.

It is worth being clear about what that 22.0% is, though. With a single-owner insurer, a figure like it reflects a decision someone made about the whole catalog — Aetna puts 35.0% of its plans at the ceiling, and that is a house style you can hold the company to. Nobody chose 22.0%. It is what nineteen unrelated companies happened to add up to this year, and it could move next year without any of them changing anything.

Why the Brand Tells You Less Than Usual

With a national insurer, the brand at least tells you who runs the call center and who negotiates the contracts. With Blue Cross it does not. The licensee in your state sets the network, prices the plans, runs the service and earns the star rating, and CMS rates contracts rather than brands, so there is no such thing as a Blue Cross Blue Shield star rating to look up. Our guide to how star ratings are built sets out what CMS is actually scoring, and why the unit being scored matters here more than anywhere else.

The practical consequence is that any advice you read about “Blue Cross Medicare Advantage” — good or bad — is advice about whichever licensee the writer happened to look at. A friend’s excellent experience in Michigan carries no information about the plan sold in Texas. Neither does a bad review, which cuts the other way and is worth remembering before you rule the brand out.

There is one more wrinkle. Health Care Service Corporation, which has cut its Blue-branded plans from 59 to five for 2027, also owns the former Cigna Medicare business now trading as HealthSpring, and has kept that one. In other words, the same parent company decided to keep selling Medicare Advantage under the HealthSpring name rather than the Blue one. Corporate structure in this market is not a guide to anything you can feel as a member.

The drug deductible shows the split most clearly

If you want one number that proves the badge tells you nothing, it is the drug deductible — what you pay for covered prescriptions each year before the plan starts sharing the cost. Here it is for the Blue licensees with at least ten ordinary plans with drug coverage for 2027, from the CMS plan file.

Blue licensee (parent organization)	Plans with drug coverage, 2027	Median drug deductible, 2027	At the $700 maximum	Median drug deductible, 2026
Elevance Health (Anthem)	107	$270	1.9%	$210
Highmark Health	91	$700	89.0%	$615 (the 2026 maximum)
Capital Blue Cross	35	$700	94.3%	$375
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan	24	$250	4.2%	$0
Blue Shield of California	19	$390	0%	$340
Independence Health Group	12	$350	50.0%	$0
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana	11	$700	72.7%	$300
All Blue-branded plans	356	$595	43.8%	$300
All ordinary plans	3,196	$650	36.0%	$440

Our own count from the CMS CY2027 and CY2026 Landscape files, ordinary plans with drug coverage (no special needs plans), Blue-branded by the organization marketing name. The 2026 maximum deductible was $615; for 2027 it is $700.

Two plans can carry the same Blue logo and differ by $450 a year on this one line before a single copay is counted. A typical Anthem plan asks you to pay $270 of your prescriptions before cost sharing starts; a typical Highmark or Capital Blue Cross plan asks $700. And the direction of travel differs too: Capital Blue Cross moved almost its whole drug catalog to the maximum for 2027, and the Louisiana licensee most of its own, while Anthem’s typical deductible rose by only $60. None of that is visible from the brand, which is why we keep coming back to the same advice — judge the specific plan, by its own numbers.

What to Do Instead

Treat a Blue plan exactly as you would any other, and in this order.

Find which licensee operates in your county — the plan’s own documents name it — and then stop thinking about the brand entirely. Look up the 2027 star rating of that specific contract on the Medicare Plan Finder, not a figure attributed to Blue Cross nationally. Check your doctors against that plan’s directory by telephone. Run your prescriptions through the Plan Finder against that plan’s formulary. Then compare its out-of-pocket limit with the $7,100 market median for 2027 and with the other plans sold at your address. Our guide to what a Medicare Advantage plan actually costs goes through the four numbers that make up the bill, and the 2026 cost breakdown shows what each of them is worth across a year.

Our state-by-state analysis shows how many insurers compete where you live, which tells you how much shopping is likely to be worth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Blue Cross Blue Shield one company? No. Blue-branded Medicare Advantage plans are sold by 19 separate parent organizations for 2027, the largest being Elevance Health and Highmark Health. They do not share networks, pricing or ratings.

What is Blue Cross Blue Shield’s star rating? There isn’t one. CMS rates contracts, and the Blue licensees hold separate contracts with separate scores. Across the 488 Blue-branded plans with a published 2027 rating, the mean is 3.77 and 47.5% reach four stars — but that is an average of unrelated companies, not a rating you can buy.

Is Anthem the same as Blue Cross? Anthem plans are Blue-branded plans owned by Elevance Health, which is the largest single owner in the group with 221 plans for 2027.

Are Blue plans cheaper? Less often free than average: 54.3% of 2027 Blue plans charge nothing beyond Part B against 69.7% market-wide. On out-of-pocket protection they are better than average, with 22.0% at the legal ceiling against 28.2%.

Can I keep my Blue plan if I move to another state? Not automatically. Medicare Advantage plans are sold by county, and moving out of a plan’s service area ends your enrollment in it — though it also opens a special enrollment period. A Blue plan in your new state would be a different company’s product.

Do Blue plans have a lower drug deductible? It depends entirely on the licensee. Across all Blue-branded ordinary plans with drug coverage the typical deductible for 2027 is $595, a little under the market’s $650, but Anthem’s (Elevance) plans have a typical deductible of $270 while almost nine in ten Highmark and Capital Blue Cross plans charge the full $700.

Bottom Line

There is no Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicare Advantage to review. There are 509 plans wearing the same badge for 2027, owned by nineteen companies that have little to do with each other, and the aggregate of them is mixed: below the market on ratings and on free plans, better than it on out-of-pocket protection.

So ignore the badge. Find out which company actually sells the plan in your county, look up that contract’s 2027 rating, and judge it against the plans sold at your address. That is more work than reading a brand review, and it is the only thing that will tell you anything true.

What We Counted as a “Blue” Plan

The hard part of this count was not the arithmetic, it was the definition. Working from the CY2027 and CY2026 Landscape files published by CMS in September 2026, we treated a plan as Blue-branded when the organization marketing name it is sold under contains Blue Cross, Blue Shield, BCBS, Anthem, Wellpoint or Highmark. That gives 509 plans out of the 5,522 in the 2027 file, and 565 out of 5,553 in the 2026 file. 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 488 plans that carry one.

That definition is ours and it is a judgment, not a fact: it follows the name a shopper actually sees, rather than any formal licensing list, so a plan sold by a Blue licensee under some other brand is not counted here. Everything else — what we keep, what we exclude, and why a share of plans is not a share of members — follows the standard method set out 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 Blue-branded plans, the parent organizations behind them, the plan counts by owner, the 2026 star figures, the premium shares and the out-of-pocket limits, including the $9,850 ceiling for 2027. All calculations and the definition of “Blue-branded” 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 HCSC owning the former Cigna Medicare business now trading as HealthSpring.
• 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.

All figures on this page were checked against the sources above on October 12, 2026; the drug deductible table was added on October 18, 2026, from the CMS Landscape 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.