Medigap Rate Increases in 2026: Reading the Filings, Not the Envelope

The 2026 number, and the number it replaced

Telos Actuarial, a Nebraska consulting firm that tracks supplement rate filings nationwide, puts the 2026 industry average increase for open Plan G blocks at 16.8%, with Plan N averaging 15.0%. Both figures cover approved filings through July, so the year-end totals will move slightly as more states report.

The comparison that makes those numbers land sits four years back. In 2022, the same group of large carriers averaged increases around 5%. Early 2026 filings from the six largest — Aetna, the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, Cigna, Humana, Mutual of Omaha and UnitedHealthcare — landed between roughly 12% and 26% for Plan G.

None of this is secret. Rate filings are public documents and the aggregate picture has pointed the same direction for three years. What changed is the size, not the direction.

2026 Plan G average

16.8%

Open blocks, approved through July

2026 Plan N average

15.0%

Same measurement, second-most-bought letter

Large-carrier range

12–26%

Early-2026 Plan G filings

Same group in 2022

~5%

The baseline most households remember

“Which carrier raised the most” is the wrong question

Ranking companies by this year's filing rewards the insurer that corrected first and punishes the one still walking toward its target. The year-over-year comparisons make that sequencing visible: Aetna and Mutual of Omaha took large steps in 2024 and 2025, ahead of the market, which means their 2026 actions are smaller relative to their own recent history.

The other large carriers moved later. Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare raised rates modestly in 2025, in the range of 11% to 13%, then added another five to nine points in 2026. Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates spread across a wider band depending on the state block. Read as one season, the 2026 filings look like a late correction rather than a new crisis, which is a different conclusion than a league table supports.

The outlier quoted most often is Chubb, which raised rates on one Illinois block by 45% and applied it immediately rather than on each policyholder's anniversary. That is not a national carrier policy. It is what a small, closed, ageing block looks like when the claims experience finally arrives, and it is the reason a policy's history deserves more weight than its brand.

Alaska tells the smaller version of the same story. Premera Blue Cross raised Plan G premiums nearly 12% this year, and a second carrier in the state filed close to 13%. A market with fewer members and concentrated claims has no room to spread risk.

The base rate decides more of your cost than the percentage

A 16.8% increase on a Plan G premium near the national average of about $164 a month works out to roughly $26 more each month, or a little over $300 across a year. That average comes from 2023 data and has drifted upward since, but the arithmetic is the point: a percentage tells you how fast a number is moving, never whether it started high.

Carrier A at $140 with a 20% increase lands at $168. Carrier B at $190 with an 8% increase lands at $205. The company with the gentler filing is still the more expensive policy, and it will likely stay that way for years. Which is why the question at enrollment is not “what is your rate this year” but “what has your rate done over the last five, and how many people are in the block I would be joining?”

The rating method underneath the premium matters just as much. An attained-age policy climbs on every birthday; an issue-age policy freezes your age at purchase; a community-rated policy charges the same rate to everyone in the area. Three identical Plan G cards, three different cost curves, and the gap widens the longer you hold the policy.

What is actually pushing the filings upward

• Utilization. Beneficiaries are using more care per person: more visits, more imaging, more procedures. Every additional service becomes a claim the premium has to cover.
• Medical inflation. Hospital facility fees, specialist rates and clinical labor costs have climbed faster than general inflation, and a supplement pays those same underlying bills.
• Churn from Medicare Advantage. When an Advantage plan leaves a market or narrows a network, some members return to Original Medicare and buy a supplement. The people who leave an Advantage plan are often the ones using the most care, and their arrival changes the claims profile of the block they enter.
• Closed blocks. Any letter or policy series no longer sold has a membership that only ages. Claims per member rise every year and there are no new enrollees to balance them.
• Aggressive pricing, corrected. Several carriers priced to win market share for a decade. The last three years of filings are the bill for that.

Why the increase is the easier half of the problem

A premium can be shopped. The ability to shop expires. Your six-month Medigap Open Enrollment Period begins the month Part B starts, and inside it any carrier must sell you any policy it offers at its standard rate. Once it closes, most states allow medical underwriting, and one honest answer on an application can end the conversation.

The map is uneven. At least sixteen states give residents some form of birthday rule, allowing a move between supplement plans around their birthday without health questions, usually only to a policy with equal or lesser benefits. Four states, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New York, require insurers to offer at least one Medigap policy to every applicant regardless of health. Outside those protections, a policy bought at 65 is effectively a policy you keep.

That is the real reason a rate increase stings. The premium rose and the leverage you had at 65 is gone. It is also why the Advantage detour deserves a second thought before taking it: someone who joins an Advantage plan when first eligible has a twelve-month trial right to return to a supplement without underwriting, and after that window most states will ask health questions. Plenty of households learn this in the wrong order.

What we do with a client facing a double-digit increase

• Ask for the five-year rate history in writing, by carrier and by block, before anything else is compared.
• Confirm the household discount. Many carriers take 5% to 15% off when a spouse or partner also holds a policy, and it is routinely missed on a re-shop.
• Price high-deductible Plan G. Identical benefits after a deductible that, for many households, is smaller than the annual difference in premium.
• Review on the policy anniversary, not during the fall enrollment window. Medigap sits entirely outside the Annual Enrollment Period, and waiting until October puts the decision in the wrong season.
• Check the Part B and IRMAA side too. The 2026 standard Part B premium is $202.90 with a $283 deductible, and one high income year two returns back can add a surcharge that dwarfs any carrier's rate action.
• Never cancel the existing policy until the new one is issued and in force.

If you only read one paragraph

If you hold Plan G or Plan N and your increase landed in the mid-teens, you are inside the market rather than an outlier. If it came in above 20%, the block you sit in is the thing to examine, because a closed block will keep producing years like this one.

If you are still inside your six-month window, the decision in front of you is not the premium in isolation. It is the rate history, the size of the block and the household discount, judged across ten years rather than one.

If the window has already closed, an annual review still matters, but health questions will decide more of the outcome than price does. Preventing that situation is the part of this work we care about most, and it is why we ask about rate history before we ever quote a rate.