Health Twenty-five hospital systems have dropped Medicare Advantage this year, and a mid-year exit brings no automatic 90-day protection. By Warren Cohen, Twenty-five hospital systems have walked away from Medicare Advantage contracts in 2026, according to an industry tracker that keeps adding names as the year goes on. Each exit follows a similar script: a termination letter arrives, the hospital’s doctors and facilities go out of network, and the beneficiary’s plan card looks unchanged even though the providers behind it are gone. Many retirees assume a disruption of this size opens the same guaranteed switching window and extended treatment protection that comes with a plan’s own year-end exit from Medicare. The federal rulebook draws a sharper line than that assumption allows. Becker’s Hospital Review Counts 25 Exits, and the List Keeps Growing Becker’s Hospital Review has tracked hospital-insurer breakups involving Medicare Advantage since 2023, and its running 2026 list documented 25 health systems that had gone out of network with at least one Advantage insurer by late July, a count the outlet has kept updating as new contract breaks landed through the summer. Fort Myers, Florida-based Lee Health, Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based UNC Health are among the systems that broke with one or more Medicare Advantage insurers this year, citing reasons that range from prior-authorization denials and slow reimbursement to insurers terminating the contracts outright. The trend has not slowed. Becker’s own running list of 2026 contract breaks has since grown past 25, with Columbus-based Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and New York City-based NewYork-Presbyterian both facing Oct. 1 exit dates from UnitedHealthcare or Humana Advantage networks absent a new deal.