By Paul Barrett, CMIP , Founder, The Modern Medicare Agency Licensed in 37 states · 18+ years Medicare-exclusive · Last updated July 24, 2026
A note on region: the specific premiums cited throughout this article reflect New York’s downstate DFS rating regions — Long Island, the five boroughs, and Westchester/Mid-Hudson , where we do most of our work. Upstate New York (Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and surrounding areas) falls under separate DFS rating regions with generally lower premiums. The statewide statistics (market share, plan-type mix, enrollment totals) cover all of New York; the specific dollar figures do not.
Key Takeaways
- UnitedHealthcare, selling under the AARP brand, controlled 77.84% of the entire New York Medigap market as of December 31, 2024 — the most recent verified figure available. Year to year this has typically run 75% or higher — a dominant position by any measure, even if the exact number shifts slightly year to year.
- That dominance isn’t an accident of marketing. New York’s guaranteed-issue, community-rated rules actually reinforce it — and we’ll walk through exactly why.
- UHC’s Plan G premium in New York jumped 17.8% for 2026 — the largest single-year DFS-approved increase in recent memory. For 2027, UHC has already filed for another 11.6% to 13.5% increase.
- In August 2025, AM Best downgraded UnitedHealthcare’s financial strength rating from A+ (Superior) to A (Excellent) — still a strong rating, but a real, documented decline tied to deteriorating Medicare Advantage performance.
- Plan F is closed to anyone who became Medicare-eligible on or after January 1, 2020 — yet it’s still New York’s single most-enrolled Medigap plan. We’ll explain why, and whether that loyalty still makes financial sense.
- In New York specifically, Plan N is usually the better value over Plan G — for reasons that are more true here than almost anywhere else in the country. We’ll show the actual math.
- No sales pitch here. UHC/AARP is the biggest name in this market for real reasons, and it also has real trade-offs. Both things are true at once.
Fast Facts: UHC/AARP Medigap in New York (2026)
NY statewide Medigap market share (UHC/AARP) | 77.84% (as of Dec 31, 2024 — the most recent verified figure; typically 75%+ year to year) |
Underwriting entity for NY residents | UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of New York |
Total NY Medigap enrollment (all carriers) | 459,109 beneficiaries |
Most popular plan type in NY | Plan F — 39.3% of all NY Medigap enrollees |
Second most popular plan type in NY | Plan N — 29.2% |
Third most popular plan type in NY (Plan G) | 21.7% |
2026 NY Plan G rate increase | +17.8% |
2027 NY requested increase (standardized plans) | 11.6% – 13.5% |
2027 NY requested increase (pre-standardized plans/riders) | 0% – 12.1% |
AM Best Financial Strength Rating | A (Excellent) — downgraded from A+ (Superior) in August 2025 |
AARP membership required | Yes — annual fee, no NY first-year waiver (unlike most other states) |
NY Plan G premium (Long Island region, 2026) | $372.50/month |
NY Plan N premium (Long Island region, 2026) | $299.00/month |
NY Part B excess charge cap | 5% (vs. 15% in most other states) |
Rating method | Community-rated (no age-based increases, but plan-wide rate hikes apply to everyone) |
Sources: Mark Farrah Associates, “December 2024 Medigap Enrollment & Market Share,” prepared for UnitedHealthcare Ins Co, sourced from NAIC Medicare Supplement Insurance Experience Exhibit filings, May 2025; NY DFS Medicare Supplement Plans and Rates (effective June 1, 2026); uhc.com/medicare/resources/uhcratesforny.html; AM Best press release, August 28, 2025.
Fast Facts: UHC/AARP Medigap in New York (2026)
Nationally, UnitedHealthcare is already the largest Medigap insurer in the country, selling AARP-branded plans in every state plus D.C. In New York specifically, that dominance is even more pronounced: UHC/AARP held 77.84% of the entire statewide Medigap market as of December 31, 2024 — the most recent verified figure, sourced directly from UHC’s own official Mark Farrah Associates report, which is built from the same state-filed data every carrier reports to NAIC. Year to year, that number moves a little, but it’s reliably run at 75% or higher for some time. That’s not a leading market share — that’s most of the market, by a wide margin, in a state with over a dozen carriers technically competing for the same business.
Worth understanding clearly: AARP itself isn’t an insurance company. AARP licenses its name and brand to UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company, which underwrites, prices, and pays every claim. UnitedHealthcare pays AARP a royalty fee for the use of that name — AARP doesn’t employ agents, doesn’t process claims, and doesn’t set rates. When people say “I have AARP insurance,” what they actually have is a UnitedHealthcare policy with AARP’s brand on it.
For New York residents specifically, the underwriting entity is UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of New York, based in Islandia, NY — a separate legal entity from the “UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of America” book of business that some other states use, which can sometimes carry different starting premiums.
The Guaranteed-Issue Connection: Why New York's Consumer Protection Also Concentrates the Market
This is the part most articles about UHC’s dominance skip entirely, and it’s genuinely important to understand.
New York is one of a small handful of states with continuous, year-round guaranteed-issue Medigap coverage. Every carrier must accept every applicant, every day of the year, with no medical underwriting, no health questions, and no ability to charge more based on health status. Combined with community rating (everyone pays the same premium regardless of age), this is one of the strongest consumer protections in the country — most states only guarantee this for a single 6-month window around your 65th birthday.
Here’s the trade-off nobody advertises: that same protection makes it much harder for smaller carriers to compete on price. In a state where anyone can switch to any plan at any time regardless of health, the carrier’s risk pool includes everyone — the healthy 66-year-old and the 84-year-old with five chronic conditions, all paying the identical rate. Pricing that risk accurately requires either a very large, stable pool of members to smooth out the cost, or a willingness to price defensively high. Smaller carriers, without UHC’s scale, generally have to price higher to protect themselves against adverse selection — which is part of why UHC has consistently remained the lowest-priced or near-lowest-priced Plan G carrier in New York even after a 17.8% increase in 2026.
The result is a bit of a flywheel: UHC’s scale lets it price competitively → competitive pricing attracts more members under guaranteed-issue rules → more members reinforces the scale advantage → smaller carriers get squeezed further out. New York’s consumer protection is real and valuable, but it’s also part of why one carrier owns close to 78% of the market instead of five carriers splitting it evenly.
Is the Flywheel Starting to Slow Down on Purpose?
Here’s something that doesn’t show up in any public filing, but that we see directly working in this market: UHC has been managing its own growth in New York for years, not just riding it.
For a while now, UHC has made many of its upstate New York Medigap plans non-commissionable — meaning independent agents simply don’t get paid for enrolling someone in those plans, which naturally means fewer agents actively recommend them. More recently, that same pattern has extended into the downstate region: commissions on UHC’s Medigap plans here have been drastically reduced. The practical effect is exactly what you’d expect — a lot of agents in this market now steer conversations toward Medicare Advantage instead, simply because that’s where the compensation still makes sense to spend time on.
This lines up with the guaranteed-issue dynamic described above, and it’s worth thinking through why a carrier would deliberately slow down its own growth engine. No insurance carrier, no matter how large, actually wants too large a share of the business in any one market — and that’s especially true in a state with year-round guaranteed-issue rights, where a carrier can’t use underwriting to manage who enrolls or when. If your risk pool can grow or shrink at any time, with any health status, holding an outsized share of that pool concentrates your risk in a way that’s much harder to manage than in states with more limited enrollment windows. Pulling back commissions is a quiet, effective lever to slow new enrollment without changing headline rates or triggering a regulatory conversation.
Our expectation, based on what we’re seeing on the ground: the New York Medigap market is heading for a real reshaping over the next several years — not because UHC is losing its price advantage, but because it may not want to keep growing the way it has been. Whether that means smaller carriers gradually picking up more of the business, more clients being steered toward Medicare Advantage instead of Medigap by agents following the commission, or something else entirely remains to be seen. But the market ten years from now is unlikely to look like the 78%-dominant market it is today, and commission structure — not rate competitiveness — may end up being the reason why.
The Rate History: What's Actually Happened
- 2024: Multiple UHC/AARP Plan G and Plan N policyholders nationally reported increases in the 12–15% range through the year, with some seeing a mid-year increase on top of a January increase.
- 2025: Similar pattern continued — community reports of 13% increases mid-year followed by additional increases in early 2025, compounding to 18%+ over a short window for some enrollees.
- 2026 (confirmed, New York-specific): UHC’s approved NY DFS Plan G rate increase came in at +17.8% — the largest single-year, state-approved increase in recent memory for this carrier in New York.
- 2027 (filed, not yet approved): UHC has requested 11.6% to 13.5% increases across standardized plans A through N (including Plan G), and 0% to 12.1% for pre-standardized plans and riders, pending NY DFS review.
That’s two consecutive years of double-digit increases already confirmed or filed, on top of a pattern of elevated increases in the two years before that. This isn’t a one-time correction — it’s a sustained trend.
Why the Rates Keep Climbing
A few forces are compounding here, and they’re mostly industry-wide, not unique to UHC:
- Post-pandemic utilization catch-up. Deferred care during 2020–2022 is now showing up as higher claims volume across nearly every carrier.
- Part D redesign cost-shifting. Changes to the Part D catastrophic coverage cap (down to $2,100 for 2026) shifted more financial responsibility onto insurers, and that cost gets priced into premiums across the board — including, indirectly, into how carriers manage their overall Medicare book.
- Medicare Advantage cost pressure at the parent company level. UnitedHealth Group’s own August 2025 AM Best downgrade was driven specifically by deteriorating Medicare Advantage performance — $6.5 billion in additional projected medical expenses for 2025 alone. When a company’s overall Medicare business is under that kind of pressure, rate discipline tends to tighten across every Medicare-adjacent product line, Medigap included.
- New York’s guaranteed-issue risk pool, as covered above, means rate increases have to cover a broader, less predictable pool of enrollees than in states with medical underwriting.
Is Plan F, Plan G, or Plan N Worth It in New York for 2026?
Plan F is closed to new enrollees. If you became eligible for Medicare on or after January 1, 2020, you cannot enroll in Plan F — federal law closed it (along with Plan C) to new enrollees as part of a broader effort to reduce first-dollar coverage that was seen as encouraging overutilization. Only people who were Medicare-eligible before that date can still have or newly enroll in Plan F.
And yet Plan F is still New York’s single most popular Medigap plan — 39.3% of all NY Medigap enrollees are on it, well ahead of Plan N (29.2%) and Plan G (21.7%). Plan F was the dominant plan across nearly the entire country for decades before the 2020 cutoff, and New York’s enrollment reflects that history: a large, loyal, aging population that enrolled years ago and has simply never left. In our experience, most people still on Plan F aren’t there because they ran the numbers recently — they’re there because Plan F means never seeing a medical bill, ever, for anything Medicare-approved. That peace of mind is worth something real to a lot of people, even at a higher premium, and for someone who values that certainty over optimizing every dollar, staying on Plan F is a completely reasonable choice. It’s just not usually the lowest-cost choice anymore.
For anyone newly eligible, Plan F isn’t an option — the real decision in New York is Plan G versus Plan N, and in New York specifically, that decision tilts toward Plan N more often than it does in most of the rest of the country.
Why Plan N Beats Plan G More Often in New York Specifically
Both Plan G and Plan N leave you responsible for the Part B deductible ($283 in 2026). Beyond that, the two plans differ in exactly two ways: Plan N adds up to a $20 copay per doctor visit and up to a $50 copay per ER visit (if you’re not admitted), and Plan N can expose you to Part B excess charges — the extra amount some doctors are legally allowed to bill above what Medicare approves.
That second point matters far less in New York than it does almost anywhere else. New York caps excess charges at 5%, compared to the 15% ceiling most other states allow — and in 18 years of doing this exclusively, we’ve never once had a client actually get billed an excess charge here. It happens elsewhere. It’s a real, live risk in states without New York’s cap. In New York, it’s close to a non-issue.
That leaves the premium gap as the deciding factor — and in New York, that gap is unusually large. On the current Long Island rate table, Plan G runs $372.50/month versus Plan N at $299.00/month — a $73.50/month, $882/year premium difference. That’s a wider spread than what you’ll typically find in other states, which is exactly why Plan N tends to be the better value here more often than the national conversation about “G vs. N” would suggest.
Run the actual math: at $20 per office visit, it would take about 44 office visits in a single year for Plan N’s copays to fully erase that $882 annual premium savings — before even counting the money you’re keeping in the meantime. Build in a couple of ER visits at $50 each, and you can still comfortably stay under three dozen office visits a year and come out ahead on Plan N. For the overwhelming majority of people — even those managing a couple of chronic conditions with regular specialist visits — Plan N’s copay exposure just doesn’t come close to catching up to the premium savings.
For anyone newly eligible in New York, Plan N deserves serious consideration before defaulting to Plan G — not because Plan G is a bad plan, but because the specific combination of New York’s wide G-vs-N premium spread and its low excess-charge cap tilts the math here more than it does almost anywhere else in the country. High Deductible Plan G is a third option worth comparing too, which we’ve covered in detail for specific Long Island markets.
Pros and Cons of Choosing UHC/AARP Specifically
Pros:
- Consistently one of the lowest-priced Plan G carriers in New York, even after recent increases — the scale advantage is real.
- Financial strength remains solidly rated (A, Excellent) despite the 2025 downgrade — not a company in financial distress.
- Nationwide portability if you split time between states or travel extensively — worth noting this is a feature of Medigap as a federally standardized product generally, not something unique to UHC. Every Medigap carrier’s plans work the same way with any doctor who accepts Medicare, nationwide.
- Non-insurance member perks layered on top of the policy, including the Renew Active fitness program and a 24/7 nurse line — genuinely useful extras, though it’s worth understanding these are ancillary member benefits UHC adds, not part of the standardized Medigap coverage itself (no carrier can alter what a “Plan G” actually covers).
- Massive scale means established claims processes and a long operating history in this market.
Cons:
- Two consecutive years of double-digit rate increases, with no clear sign of that trend ending in 2027.
- Requires separate, ongoing AARP membership — an extra fee layered on top of your premium, and New York doesn’t get the first-year waiver some other states receive.
- AM Best downgrade from A+ to A in August 2025, tied specifically to deteriorating Medicare-related financial performance — worth watching, even though the current rating is still strong.
- Being the dominant carrier means less competitive pressure to hold rates down — the flywheel effect described above cuts both ways.
- Online community feedback on claims experience is mixed, which is common for a carrier of this size, but worth knowing going in.
The Competition Is Thinning, Not Just Losing Ground
It’s not only that UHC holds the lion’s share of the New York Medigap market — some of its historically larger competitors have been actively exiting. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, one of the more recognizable names that might otherwise offer real competition, has stopped accepting new Medicare Supplement applications in New York entirely. Existing Anthem Medigap members keep their coverage as long as they keep paying premiums, but there’s no path for a new customer to enroll with Anthem for Medigap in this state. That’s a meaningfully different, and arguably more significant, story than a static market-share percentage — it shows one of UHC’s few historically larger-scale competitors has effectively left the field, which only reinforces the concentration and competitive dynamics described above.
Paul's Honest Take
UHC/AARP didn’t get to nearly 78% of this market by accident, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise — for a lot of people, it genuinely has been the most competitively priced Plan G option in New York for years, and that’s still true even after a rough couple of years of increases. But “biggest and historically cheapest” isn’t the same thing as “guaranteed best for you,” and New York’s guaranteed-issue rules mean you’re never locked in — you can shop this every single year if you want to, unlike most of the country. With back-to-back double-digit increases now confirmed or filed for 2026 and 2027, and a real, documented financial-strength downgrade behind the headlines, I think this is exactly the moment to actually compare UHC against the field rather than assume the name you know is still the best deal. Sometimes it still will be. Sometimes a smaller carrier, or High Deductible Plan G, will beat it on real numbers. The only way to know is to actually run the comparison — not to guess based on brand recognition.
Frequently Asked Questions
77.84% of the statewide market as of December 31, 2024 — the most recent verified figure, typically running 75% or higher year to year, driven in part by consistently competitive pricing under New York’s guaranteed-issue rules
No. AARP licenses its brand name to UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company, which underwrites, prices, and pays claims for all AARP-branded Medicare Supplement plans. UnitedHealthcare pays AARP a royalty fee for use of the name.
Plan G increased 17.8% — the largest single-year DFS-approved increase for this carrier in recent memory.
Standardized plans (A through N, including Plan G) have requested increases ranging from 11.6% to 13.5%, and pre-standardized plans and riders have requested 0% to 12.1%, pending New York DFS review and approval.
Yes. AM Best downgraded UnitedHealthcare’s Financial Strength Rating from A+ (Superior) to A (Excellent) in August 2025, citing significantly deteriorating operating performance tied largely to Medicare Advantage costs. The rating remains strong, but the downgrade itself is real and documented.
Because every carrier must accept every applicant year-round with no medical underwriting, pricing that risk favors carriers with large, stable enrollment pools. That scale advantage has helped UHC remain price-competitive, which in turn attracts more enrollees under guaranteed-issue rules — reinforcing its dominant market position over time.
Only for people who became eligible for Medicare before January 1, 2020. Plan F (and Plan C) closed to new enrollees under federal law after that date — yet it remains New York’s most-enrolled plan, at 39.3% of all NY Medigap policyholders, largely due to long-standing loyalty among people who value never seeing a medical bill over optimizing cost.
Often, yes — more so in New York than in most other states. New York’s premium spread between the two is unusually wide (around $73/month on the current Long Island rate table), and New York caps Part B excess charges at 5% (versus 15% in most other states), which limits Plan N’s main downside. Running the math, it typically takes roughly 40+ office visits in a single year for Plan N’s copays to erase the premium savings versus Plan G — a threshold most people never come close to reaching.
Not automatically. UHC has remained price-competitive in New York even after recent increases. But because New York allows year-round guaranteed-issue switching, it’s worth having your specific numbers compared against other carriers and against High Deductible Plan G before assuming your current plan is still the best value.
Based on the pattern of the last several years — consecutive double-digit increases, industry-wide utilization and Part D cost pressure, and UnitedHealthcare’s own documented Medicare-related financial strain — there’s no strong signal this trend reverses soon. It’s reasonable to expect continued meaningful increases, which is exactly why reviewing your coverage annually matters more now than it may have a few years ago.
Part of it is genuine plan fit, but part of it is commission structure. UHC has made many of its upstate New York Medigap plans non-commissionable for years, and has more recently reduced commissions on its downstate Medigap plans as well. When agents aren’t compensated for spending time on a product, fewer of them actively recommend it — which shifts more conversations toward Medicare Advantage regardless of whether it’s actually the better fit for a given person. It’s worth asking any agent directly whether their recommendation is driven by your needs or by what pays them.
Internal Links to Add
- Link “High Deductible Plan G” mentions → existing Huntington Medigap/HDG article
- Link “NY DFS rate table” mention → existing Medigap rate-increase-by-company article
- Link “guaranteed issue” mentions → any existing town-cluster Medigap articles referencing NY guaranteed issue
- Link “free consultation” CTA → /free-consultation/
Disclaimer (include at bottom per standard site footer)
The Modern Medicare Agency is not connected with or endorsed by the U.S. government or the federal Medicare program. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Rate and market share figures are based on the most recent available data at time of publication and are subject to change; 2027 rates remain pending New York DFS approval and may differ from filed amounts. AARP does not employ or endorse agents, brokers, or producers.
Sources: paulbinsurance.com internal market data; NY State Department of Financial Services Medicare Supplement Plans and Rates (effective June 1, 2026); uhc.com/medicare/resources/uhcratesforny.html; AM Best press release, August 28, 2025.
