This page sets out where the information on Medicare Plan Compass comes from, how it is checked, and how often it is reviewed. If something here does not match what you read elsewhere, we want to know.
Who does this
Medicare Plan Compass is written and edited by one person, Unai Sampedro. He is not a licensed insurance agent or broker, has never worked in insurance and has no professional background in healthcare. That is exactly why the method below is written out in full: the authority here is not in who wrote it, it is in the documents it comes from and in the fact that you can check every step yourself. More about him on the About page.
Where the figures come from
Every premium, deductible, penalty and deadline on this site is taken from one of these seven kinds of source:
- The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which sets and publishes the annual figures
- Medicare.gov, the official consumer site
- The Social Security Administration, which administers enrollment, the income-related adjustment (IRMAA) and late-enrollment penalties
- Insurers’ own published plan documents
- The Code of Federal Regulations, for rules written in law rather than summarized on a consumer page
- Our own analysis of the plan data CMS publishes (the Landscape files, the PBP Benefits files and the Star Ratings data tables), which is always labeled as ours and always shown with the method used
- Named research organizations and trade press, for the small number of facts no government body publishes — an insurer’s market share, a hospital system leaving a network, the outcome of a lawsuit. These are always cited by name and linked, and never used for a figure CMS or Medicare.gov publishes itself
What we don’t use
We don’t take figures from other Medicare blogs, from lead-generation comparison sites, or from any source that does not name where its own numbers came from. If a number cannot be traced to a document you can open and read, it does not go into the article — and when we cannot find such a document for something readers would like to know, we say so in the article rather than quote a figure we cannot stand behind. That is why several pages here explain why they do not publish an average premium.
Source links
Every figure on a published article links to the document that sets it, and each article ends with a list of its sources saying which figures came from which document, plus the date the article was last checked. You should not have to take our word for any number here.
Where we have done the arithmetic ourselves — a percentage, an annual total, a median — the sources list says so explicitly.
Our own analysis of the CMS plan data
Some of what is on this site is not reported anywhere else, because we calculated it. CMS publishes a Landscape file listing every approved Medicare Advantage and Part D plan, county by county, with its premium, its out-of-pocket limit and its star rating. We work from that file directly.
When we do, the article states which version of the file we used and the date we ran the analysis, which plan categories we kept and which we excluded, how we counted a plan that is sold in many counties, and what the resulting figure does and does not mean. Anyone with the same file can reproduce the number. Where star ratings are missing for newer plans, we say how many plans the average covers.
We label these figures as ours rather than attributing them to CMS, because CMS published the data, not the conclusion.
How we count Medicare Advantage plans
The insurer reviews and head-to-head comparisons on this site all share one counting method. It is written out here once, in full, so that each article can say what it counted without repeating the whole procedure.
We work from the CY2026 Medicare Advantage and Part D Landscape file published by CMS, September 2026 version, which lists every approved plan county by county with its premium, its in-network out-of-pocket limit and its star rating. From that file we keep the MA, MA-PD and SNP categories and exclude stand-alone Part D plans, Cost plans and employer group plans. We then reduce it to one entry per distinct plan nationally rather than one per county, which gives 5,553 plans for 2026 and 5,522 for 2027.
Four consequences follow, and they apply to every figure we publish this way:
- Percentages are shares of plans, not of enrollment. That is why our star figures differ from the enrollment-weighted averages CMS publishes: in our count a plan with 400 members weighs the same as one with 400,000.
- Star averages cover only the plans that carry a published rating. Newer contracts have none, so each article states how many plans its average is built on.
- The same applies to every other percentage. A plan the file marks Not Enough Data Available or Plan Too New To Be Measured has no premium and no rating, so it cannot be counted as charging one or not charging one. Those plans are excluded from the shares rather than counted as zero, and the article says how many plans the share was worked out over. Kaiser is the clearest example: it sells 126 plans, five of them too new to have figures, so its percentages are over 121.
- “No monthly premium” means the combined Part C and Part D premium is zero. The Part B premium of $202.90 a month is payable on every plan regardless.
- A median out-of-pocket limit is a median across plans, which means half of that insurer’s plans sit above the figure quoted. It describes the catalog, never the plan in front of you.
Every insurer we compare against another was counted from the same file, by the same method, on the same date, so the comparisons are apples to apples. Anyone with the file can reproduce the figures.
The exact files we count from
Each of these is a download published by CMS. The version in parentheses is the one our current figures come from; when CMS issues a new version, we recount and say so in the article’s update history.
- CY2027 Landscape file (version 202609.1) — every plan on sale for 2027, with premiums, out-of-pocket limits, drug deductibles and service areas.
- CY2026 Landscape file (version 202609) — the same for 2026, used for every year-over-year comparison.
- 2027 Star Ratings Data Tables (October 8, 2026) — the overall rating of each contract, matched to its plans.
- PBP Benefits – 2027 and PBP Benefits – 2026 — the benefit filings each plan submits, used for extra benefits such as over-the-counter allowances, eyewear, hearing aids, meals and transportation. Our 2026 count from this file matches KFF’s published shares, which is how we check that we are reading it correctly.
Download our numbers. So that anyone can check our counts without redoing them, we publish the results as spreadsheets (CSV, opens in Excel or Google Sheets): Medicare Advantage by state, 2027 vs 2026 (plans, premiums, out-of-pocket limits, ratings and insurers for every state) and Medicare Advantage extra benefits, 2027 vs 2026 (over-the-counter allowances, meals, transportation and more, nationally and by insurer). Each file starts with a note naming the CMS files and the method it comes from.
Why you will see both $6,500 and $5,421 on this site
One number here has two published versions, and it is better explained than quietly reconciled. Our own count puts the median in-network out-of-pocket limit across all 5,553 plans on sale at $6,500. KFF reports an average of $5,421 for 2026. Both are correct.
They differ because they answer different questions. Ours counts every plan once and takes the midpoint, so it describes the plans on offer — which is the right benchmark when you are judging one plan against the catalog it came out of. KFF’s figure is weighted by enrollment, so it describes where members actually are.
The gap between the two is itself worth noticing: the enrollment-weighted figure is the lower one, which means people are, on the whole, ending up in plans with better cost protection than the average plan on the shelf. Neither number is yours. The statutory ceiling is $9,250 in network, or $13,900 once out-of-network spending is counted, and your own plan’s limit is on its summary of benefits. Wherever an article on this site quotes one of these, it says which it is using and where it came from.
Why you will see both 3,373 plans and 5,553 plans
The same thing happens with the size of the market, and it has an exact answer. Articles that follow KFF’s count say there are 3,373 Medicare Advantage plans in 2026. Articles that use our own count of the Landscape file say 5,553. Both are right, and the difference is two deliberate choices, not an error. Run the same two counts on the 2027 file and they come to 3,195 and 5,522; KFF had not published its own 2027 figure when we counted, so 3,195 is what its method gives rather than a number it has printed.
- Special needs plans. KFF counts the plans an ordinary beneficiary can walk up and join. We count those too, plus the 1,800 special needs plans, because a large part of this site is about who qualifies for one.
- Segments. One plan can be split into segments that carry different premiums and different out-of-pocket limits in different parts of the country. Counted whole, they are one plan; counted by segment, they are several. We count segments, because two segments with different premiums are two different offers to two different readers.
The two reconcile exactly. Take the September 2026 Landscape file, drop the special needs plans and ignore the segments, and you get 3,373 — KFF’s figure, to the plan. Keep the special needs plans and count the segments, and you get 5,553. Wherever a figure on this site depends on which of the two is being used, the article says so.
Which plan year a figure describes
Medicare runs on plan years, and the shopping season runs ahead of them. The annual enrollment window that opens on October 15, 2026, is for coverage that starts on January 1, 2027, so from the middle of October the plans you can actually buy are 2027 plans, while the plan you are covered by today is a 2026 one. For those weeks both years are live at once, which is why every figure we count ourselves says which plan year it came from.
CMS does not release it all on the same day, and that is the honest reason you will see both years on this site right now:
- Plan counts, premiums and out-of-pocket limits for 2027 are available. The 2027 Landscape file was released on September 22, 2026, and revised on September 30. Anything we count from it is labeled as the 2027 plan year.
- Star ratings for 2027 are now available too. CMS publishes them separately from the plan file, and released the 2027 Star Ratings data tables on October 8, 2026. The rating column in the 2027 Landscape file is empty, so we join each plan to its contract’s 2027 overall rating from those tables. Of the 5,522 plans, 4,992 carry a 2027 rating. Every star figure on this site has been recounted from them and is labeled as the 2027 plan year; where an article compares with last year, the 2026 figure is labeled as such.
- The 2027 Part B premium and deductible come later still, usually in November. Cost figures stay on the 2026 amounts, labeled, until CMS announces them.
We would rather show you a number with its year attached than a number that quietly belongs to a year you are not buying in. If an article quotes a 2026 figure during the 2027 shopping season, it is because the 2027 version does not exist yet — and the article says which it is.
When articles are updated
Medicare’s figures change every year. CMS publishes the following year’s premiums and deductibles in the fall, and the plan file in late September. Articles are reviewed as each piece arrives rather than all at once, and each one shows the date it was last checked and which plan year its figures describe.
What this site cannot tell you
Which plan to choose. Whether your doctor is in a given network. What your own costs will be. Those answers depend on where you live, which plans are sold in your county and how you use healthcare, and reaching them requires access to your records and, in most cases, a license. For that, 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) and your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) are both free.
Corrections
If a figure here is wrong or out of date, write to contact@medicareplancompass.com with the article and the number. We check it against the source, correct it if it is wrong, and record the date.
From October 18, 2026, an article that is changed after publication carries an Update history at the end, listing each revision by date and saying whether any figure changed. Older articles get one the next time they are revised.
Who pays for this
Advertising, served by Google AdSense and similar networks. No insurer pays to appear on this site, to be reviewed, or to be ranked, and we earn nothing from which plan you choose.