‘It’s going to be more out of pocket for us’: Uncertainty for seniors who are members of medical insurer UCare
UCare drops Medicare advantage for 2026
Greg and Jenny Doss, he’s 71 and she is 69, love working in the garden of their Brooklyn Park home.
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS showed them a release from UCare, in which the Minnesota-based nonprofit provider says it’s terminating Medicare Advantage product offerings for 2026, upon government approval.
“So, we can pick up something else, which we’ll have to investigate,” Jenny says. “But the problem is, it’s going to be more out of pocket for us.”
The couple, now retired, isn’t alone.
UCare says 158,000 members, most of them in Minnesota, will lose Medicare Advantage at the end of the year.
The nonprofit says, pending finalization of the request to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), impacted members would need to select new coverage during the upcoming enrollment period, which begins in October.
CMS is a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which works with state governments to administer Medicare and Medicaid programs.
RELATED: UCare drops Medicaid service to 88,000 people in 11 counties, citing mounting costs
In a statement, Hilary Marden-Resnik, UCare’s President and CEO, says, “This decision was not made lightly. UCare remains deeply committed to the health of Minnesotans and to supporting members through upcoming transitions.”
The Dosses say they’re worried about their health care coverage, despite promptly paying thousands in monthly premiums for years.
“It’s kind of out of the blue,” explains Greg, who retired after a career as a Target executive. “I don’t know how it’s going to work out. That’s scary, of course.”
The couple says they like the Medicare Advantage plan, where pretty much everything is taken care of, including the cost of prescriptions.
Occasionally, there might be a co-pay, Jenny says.
“If they could have said, ‘Ok, people that are on it, you can stay, we’re not accepting any more people,’” she notes. “It’s disappointing because we’ve been faithfully paying the premiums on time, and we don’t abuse it. We don’t abuse the insurance.”
But the last few years haven’t been easy.
Greg says he suffered a heart attack in 2017 and a gall bladder attack in 2021.
“I was probably an expensive patient this year,” he explains. “I had a heart attack, but it wasn’t like I planned that, and then, you know, that’s part of what insurance is.”
UCare says, “The cost of health care and challenges of the overall market have increased significantly in the past two years.”
We first reported in July that Minnesota officials expect to lose upwards of $500 million in Medicaid payments as part of President Trump’s package of tax breaks and spending cuts.
RELATED: Medicaid celebration comes as 140,000 Minnesotans might lose coverage
UCare says impacted members will have coverage until the end of the year.
The nonprofit says it will continue offering Medical Assistance (Medicaid), MinnesotaCare, special needs plans, individual and family plans and Medicare Supplement.
Meanwhile, a UCare spokesperson says eight percent of its workforce is being laid off.
5 EYEWITNESS NEWS is working to find answers about exactly how many people will be affected.
As for the Dosses, they’re hoping to find a medical plan that works for them — but they’re still grappling with a lot of questions.
“Just have to keep our fingers crossed that we never start going on the level two and three drugs, when it’s hundreds of hundreds of dollars a month,” Jenny says. “You get to the point of, if you switch to another provider, will that give us an advantage plan? What’s to say in a year or two they won’t pull the same thing?”
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