Newsroom · Tooele, Box Elder and Morgan counties

Medicare Advantage Plans in Tooele and Box Elder for 2027

The three Wasatch Front counties that ring Salt Lake, Davis and Weber lost the most this fall. Tooele goes from 15 Medicare Advantage drug plans to 11, Box Elder from 12 to 8, Morgan from 18 to 12, and each is down to two or three carriers. Here is every 2027 plan beside its 2026 numbers, the eight plans that are gone, and why Original Medicare plus Medigap has moved from the afterthought to the comparison.

Medicare On Main Data Desk

Published October 4, 2026 · 11 min read · Reviewed by Brian Penner

If you live in Tooele, Grantsville, Stansbury Park, Brigham City, Tremonton, Morgan or Mountain Green, the October 2 letters landed harder than they did in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake County lost one carrier and two plans; HealthSpring's exit, Aetna's pullback and Regence's retreat to the four big counties all hit these three at once. This article is the same shelf review we did for Salt Lake, Utah County and Weber and Davis, with one difference: when a county drops to two carriers, the Original Medicare door deserves its own section, and it gets one. The 2026 shelves are in the Tooele County post and the Brigham City and Tremonton post; this one is about 2027.

The three counties at a glance

Source: CMS CY2027 Medicare Advantage / Part D Landscape, general MA-PD rows, compared against the CY2026 file by Contract Plan ID on October 4, 2026; CMS Medicare Monthly Enrollment, June 2026. Plan names and figures are reproduced from the public file for information; nothing here is a recommendation of, or a judgment about, any company or plan. Medicare On Main does not offer every plan available in your area.

Two things stand out. First, these are high-enrollment Advantage counties: Box Elder's 60% share is higher than Salt Lake County's, so the shrinking shelf touches more than half the people with Medicare there. Second, the carriers that stayed are the same two or three in each county, which means the 2027 comparison in Brigham City is effectively Humana versus UnitedHealthcare, and in Tooele and Morgan those two plus Devoted Health.

The eight plans sold in all three counties

Sorted by 2027 cap. Premium is the consolidated Part C plus Part D monthly premium, on top of Part B. Cap is the in-network maximum out-of-pocket. The 2026 column shows the same plan's 2026 premium, cap, drug deductible and overall Star Rating; 2027 ratings are blank in the file until CMS publishes them this month. The 2027 federal Part D deductible limit is $700 and the yearly cap on covered drug costs is $2,400 (Medicare.gov).

Read the cap column first. The two UnitedHealthcare HMO-POS plans at $4,900 are the lowest caps left in any of the three counties, and AARP Essentials UT-4 actually lowered its cap from $5,200 while holding $0; the price is an HMO-POS network and a drug deductible that rose from $440 to $685. Humana Essentials Plus Giveback is the lowest-cap PPO at $5,750, up from $5,495. UnitedHealthcare's two PPOs converged at $7,150, one up from $6,700 and one down from $8,900, and the Giveback plan's $215 drug deductible is the lowest in the three counties by a wide margin. The premium column barely moved except for Humana's two HumanaChoice plans, twins at $87 in 2026, now $97 and $110.

Plans sold in Tooele and Morgan but not Box Elder

Devoted Health is the reason Tooele and Morgan kept a third carrier. Its two continuing PPOs raised their caps ($5,500 to $6,350; $9,250 to $9,850) and a third, Giveback Extras, is new at an $8,000 cap. Morgan also gets the re-issued Humana Value Choice under contract H5216-471, at $0 with a $5,000 cap, which is the lowest PPO cap in any of the three counties, but it is not sold in Tooele or Box Elder, so a Tooele Value Choice member cannot follow it. Federal rules let a carrier move members between plans of the same type under the same contract (42 CFR § 422.530); whether that happened to you, and in which county, is on your letter. How to tell a crosswalk letter from a non-renewal.

The plans that are gone

Four medical-only plans continue in all three counties for people with VA, TRICARE For Life or retiree drug coverage: three Humana USAA Honor Giveback PPOs (caps $5,100, $9,150, $9,150) and AARP Patriot No Rx UT-MA01 (HMO-POS, $7,150). Aetna Medicare Eagle (PPO) and Regence Valiance (PPO), the two medical-only plans with the lowest 2026 caps, are not sold in these counties for 2027. Four of the eight discontinued plans above, the two HealthSpring plans, Aetna Enhanced and Humana Value Choice H5216-456, have no row anywhere in the 2027 file, so their members got a non-renewal notice dated October 2 (42 CFR § 422.506) and the doors below. The Regence and Select Health plans still exist in neighboring counties; if you move to Davis or Salt Lake County you could re-join them, but a Tooele or Morgan address cannot, because Medicare.gov requires you to "live in the service area of the plan you want to join" (Medicare.gov). The Kroger plan's story is in its own post.

Why Original Medicare plus Medigap is now the comparison, not the afterthought

In Salt Lake County, with 22 plans from six carriers, a Medicare Advantage shopper can usually find a network with their doctors in it, a cap they can live with, and a drug deductible that fits, because there are enough combinations. In Box Elder, with eight plans from two carriers, you are choosing between two networks. If your cardiologist is in one and your orthopedist is in the other, no plan on the shelf solves that. That is the situation where the other door earns a real look.

Original Medicare plus a Medigap policy plus a stand-alone drug plan has no network: any doctor or hospital in the country that accepts Medicare, including Mountain West Medical Center in Tooele, Brigham City Community Hospital, Bear River Valley Hospital in Tremonton, and every University of Utah Health and Intermountain facility across the county line, with no referral and no plan prior authorization. The trade is a monthly Medigap premium, in exchange for which Plan G pays everything Original Medicare does not except the Part B deductible, and Plan N does the same with small office and ER copays. Without Medigap, Original Medicare has, in Medicare.gov's words, "no yearly limit on what you pay out-of-pocket, unless you have supplemental coverage" (Medicare.gov). Utah's 8 stand-alone drug plans for 2027 run from $5.30 to $238.00 a month; all eight are listed here.

The catch is underwriting. Outside a guaranteed-issue window, a Medigap carrier in Utah can ask health questions and decline you, and Utah has no birthday rule to re-open the door later. A discontinued plan is one of the few events that waives the questions: per Medicare.gov, when your plan leaves Medicare or stops serving your area and you return to Original Medicare, you may buy Plan A, B, D, G, K or L with no health questions, applying from 60 days before to 63 days after your coverage ends, November 1, 2026 through March 4, 2027. Plan N is not on that list. If your plan simply changed, you have no such right, and the comparison is Advantage-to-Advantage unless you can pass underwriting. The CDC's county data is a reminder that many people cannot: 30.3% of Tooele County adults have high blood pressure and 9.4% have diabetes; Box Elder is 28.2% and 8.9% (CDC PLACES, 2023). Plan G versus Plan N in Utah.

Sources: CMS landscape files · CMS Medicare Monthly Enrollment (June 2026: Tooele 10,266 people with Medicare, 5,498 in Medicare Advantage or other plans; Box Elder 10,224 and 6,085; Morgan 2,013 and 1,058).

If your plan ended: your three doors

1. Another Medicare Advantage plan sold in your county, chosen during the October 15 to December 7 Annual Enrollment Period so it starts January 1 (Medicare.gov). Doctors first, drug list second, cap third, premium last. In an HMO-POS, in-network care is the rule outside emergencies (Medicare.gov), so the $4,900 cap on the two UnitedHealthcare plans is only worth it if your doctors are in that network. How to compare two plans without a spreadsheet.
2. Original Medicare plus a Medigap policy plus a stand-alone drug plan, using the guaranteed-issue window above. Apply in November or December if you want the Medigap policy in force January 1; the window stays open to March 4 but a gap in January is a gap at 20%.
3. Original Medicare plus a drug plan, no Medigap. Lowest premium, no network, but no annual cap on your 20% share. Reasonable for some; most people in their 70s and 80s should price it before accepting it.

Miss December 7 and a discontinued plan still gives you a Special Enrollment Period from December 8 through February 28 to pick another Advantage plan (42 CFR § 422.62), but a plan chosen in January starts February 1, leaving January in Original Medicare with no drug coverage. Treat the SEP as a safety net, not a plan. The all-counties Utah post walks through the same calendar for the rest of the state.

The calendar from here

What I would do this week

1. Sort your letter. Non-renewal (the plan ends December 31, Medigap window open) or Annual Notice of Change (the plan continues with new numbers, no window). Humana Value Choice members in Morgan may have a crosswalk letter; in Tooele they cannot, because the successor plan is not sold there.
2. Write down every doctor, every prescription and your pharmacy. Then check the two or three networks in your county against that list. In Box Elder that is two checks, not twelve.
3. If both networks fail your doctor list, price the Medigap door now, not in December. Plan G and Plan N premiums for your age and ZIP, plus the drug plan that fits your prescriptions, against a $0 plan with a $4,900 to $7,150 cap. Apply in November for a January 1 start.
4. If you had HealthSpring Premier, decide which feature you were using. The $3,500 cap, the $200 drug deductible, or the $0 premium. No 2027 plan keeps all three; the two $4,900 HMO-POS plans keep the premium and most of the cap, the UnitedHealthcare Giveback PPO keeps a low drug deductible at $215, and Medigap keeps the cap at a premium.
5. Ignore the phone calls. A county losing three carriers is a magnet for marketing. No legitimate agent needs your Medicare number to "verify" anything, and nobody can enroll you in a 2027 plan before October 15. Medicare does not call you at home.

How we know all this: the Medicare On Main Data Desk frames every article with public data — here, the CMS CY2026 and CY2027 landscape files compared by Contract Plan ID on October 4, 2026, CMS's county enrollment data, CMS's hospital directory, CDC PLACES, and the Medicare.gov pages and federal rules on service areas, HMO plans, Original Medicare costs, Part D costs, non-renewal notices, plan crosswalks, enrollment periods and Medigap guaranteed-issue rights. The caps shown are in-network. We do not know which Humana Value Choice members were crosswalked; only your letter does. 2027 Star Ratings are not yet published and none are stated. Medicare On Main is a licensed independent insurance agency. We do not offer every plan available in your area. Any information we provide is limited to the plans we do offer in your area. Please contact Medicare.gov or 1-800-MEDICARE to get information on all of your options. Not connected with or endorsed by the U.S. government or the federal Medicare program. Mentioning a carrier is not an endorsement or a criticism; plan availability is a fact of the market. This is education, not advice; confirm your plan, costs and eligibility with a licensed agent or Medicare.gov.