What Happens If I Do Nothing During Medicare Open Enrollment?

If you take no action between October 15 and December 7, your Medicare Advantage or Part D drug plan renews automatically on January 1, as long as your insurer still offers it in your county. You will not lose coverage simply because you did not act.

Renewal is not the same as staying the same, though. Insurers adjust premiums, deductibles, copays, drug lists, and provider networks every year. Those changes are spelled out in the Annual Notice of Change letter that arrives by September 30, and CMS announces final 2027 figures, such as the Part D out-of-pocket cap, in late September 2026.

Some plans do not renew at all. If your insurer discontinues your plan or leaves your county, you will get a notice along with a window to choose a replacement. If that notice sits unread, a Medicare Advantage member whose plan ends can land back on Original Medicare alone, which leaves you paying 20 percent coinsurance with no out-of-pocket cap once you have met the $283 Part B deductible for 2026.

Drug coverage is the other quiet risk. A medication covered this year can move to a more expensive tier or come off the plan's list entirely next year, and the pharmacy counter in January is a hard place to find that out.

Read your Annual Notice of Change letter when it arrives, run your prescriptions against next year's drug list, and confirm your doctors and hospital are still in network. If everything checks out, doing nothing is a perfectly reasonable decision.

If something changed, compare your options between October 15 and December 7 so new coverage can start January 1. Medicare Advantage members do get a second chance from January 1 to March 31, but people with Original Medicare and a standalone drug plan do not, so the fall window is the one that counts.