How many Medicare Advantage plans does Clark County have?
Thirty-nine. For 2026, Clark County residents can choose from 39 Medicare Advantage plans that anyone eligible can join, and 20 of those carry a $0 monthly premium. The average premium across all 39 is $13.32.
There are another 25 Special Needs Plans sold here, but most people cannot join those. They are limited to specific situations, usually having both Medicare and Medicaid.
Here is the part that surprises people. Clark County is not short on choice compared with the city:
| County | Plans | At $0 premium | Average premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fayette (Lexington) | 40 | 21 | $12.90 |
| Clark (Winchester) | 39 | 20 | $13.32 |
| Jessamine (Nicholasville) | 37 | 19 | $13.55 |
| Madison (Richmond) | 35 | 17 | $14.56 |
Source: CMS CY2026 Medicare Advantage and Part D Landscape file, August 2026 refresh. Counts exclude Special Needs Plans, which most people cannot join.
One plan separates Winchester from Lexington. So if someone tells you that you have to drive into the city for real choice, that is not what the federal data says. What actually differs between counties is which carriers sell here and which hospitals those carriers include, and that is a much more useful thing to look at than the size of the list.
Seven companies sell to Clark County. Humana offers the most plans by a wide margin at 15, followed by UnitedHealthcare with 6, Centene and Elevance with 5 each, CVS Health with 4, and Lumeris and Devoted Health with 2 each.
Clark County uses Medicare Advantage more than Lexington does
Just under 62% of Clark County people on Medicare are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. That is 5,392 of 8,736 eligible residents. Fayette County sits at 54.5%, and Kentucky as a whole at 55.6%.
Clark County ranks 38th of Kentucky's 120 counties on that measure. Fayette ranks 78th.
Source: CMS Medicare Advantage State and County Penetration file, August 2026.
That gap is worth sitting with for a second. Six in ten of your neighbors are already on an Advantage plan, which means the carriers have found Clark County and worked it hard. It is part of why the mail never stops.
It does not mean Medicare Advantage is the right answer for you. It means the local default is Advantage, and defaults deserve a second look rather than a shrug. Some people here are better served by a Medigap supplement and a separate drug plan, particularly if they travel, spend part of the year elsewhere, or want to keep every door open on where they get care.
Which Medicare Advantage plans does the Winchester hospital take?
Almost all of them. Centerpoint Health Winchester, the hospital most people here still call Clark Regional, accepts Medicare Advantage plans from Humana, Anthem, Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, WellCare and Devoted Health. That is six of the seven carriers selling in Clark County.
The only one it does not take is Essence, which sells 2 of the 39 plans available here.
Verified directly with the hospital by Austin Tyler in August 2026. Networks change, and individual plans within a carrier can differ, so we re-check this before anyone enrolls.
So if all you ever needed was the hospital in Winchester, almost any plan would do. That is genuinely good news, and it is also exactly why people here get caught out.
The trap: your plan can work in Winchester and fail in Lexington
For anything the Winchester hospital does not do, you go west. Lexington is about 21 miles on I-64, roughly half an hour, and that puts UK HealthCare, Baptist Health Lexington and CHI Saint Joseph in reach.
Baptist Health Lexington has been out of network for UnitedHealthcare and WellCare Medicare Advantage since January 2024, after a dispute over care denials and payment delays. Humana was restored to in-network status there in spring 2024.
Centerpoint in Winchester accepts both of those carriers. Baptist in Lexington does not. Between them, UnitedHealthcare and WellCare sell 11 of the 39 Medicare Advantage plans in Clark County, so more than a quarter of your local menu works fine at home and becomes a problem the moment a specialist sends you into the city.
| Carrier | Plans here | Winchester hospital | Baptist Health Lexington |
|---|---|---|---|
| Humana | 15 | Accepted | In network |
| UnitedHealthcare | 6 | Accepted | Out of network |
| Anthem | 5 | Accepted | Check current status |
| WellCare | 5 | Accepted | Out of network |
| Aetna | 4 | Accepted | Check current status |
| Devoted Health | 2 | Accepted | Check current status |
| Essence | 2 | Not accepted | Check current status |
Plan counts: CMS CY2026 Landscape file, August 2026 refresh, excluding Special Needs Plans. Winchester hospital status verified with Centerpoint Health, August 2026. Baptist Health status from Baptist's published Medicare Advantage payer information; the rows marked "check current status" are ones we confirm for you at the time you enroll rather than guess at here.
Twenty-one miles, same card, two different answers. Nobody mails you a letter explaining that, and it is not something a call center in another state would think to raise. It is the reason to check both ends of the drive before you enroll, not just the hospital closest to your house. We do that check in writing, with your own doctors named, before you sign anything. Our guide to which Lexington hospitals take which Medicare Advantage plans covers the city side in more detail.
The hospital itself is a 79-bed community hospital on Hospital Drive with all private rooms, an emergency department, labor and delivery, diagnostics, and a skilled nursing transitional care unit. It has served east central Kentucky since 1917. Many people in town still call it Clark Regional, and that is fine, it is the same building.
Where you fill prescriptions changed in 2025
Rite Aid closed every remaining store in the country during 2025 after its second bankruptcy, and prescription files were sold to other chains. If you were a Rite Aid customer in Winchester, your prescriptions moved somewhere, and it is worth knowing exactly where before you pick a drug plan.
That matters more than it sounds. Every Part D and Medicare Advantage drug plan divides pharmacies into preferred and standard. The same prescription, on the same plan, can cost noticeably less at a preferred pharmacy. Winchester has CVS on West Lexington Avenue, Walgreens and Kroger on Bypass Road, Walmart, and a handful of independents, and no two plans rank them the same way.
So the honest advice for Clark County is not "pick the cheapest premium." It is: tell us which pharmacy you actually want to use, and we will find which plans treat it as preferred. If you drive to a particular counter because you like the people there, that is a legitimate thing to plan around.
If you retired from the schools or county government
Between Clark County Public Schools, city and county government, and Clark Regional itself, a large share of Winchester's retirees have coverage through a Kentucky retirement system rather than buying on the open market. Two things changed for 2026.
- Retired teachers (TRS). The Medicare Eligible Health Plan moved its group Medicare Advantage coverage from UnitedHealthcare to Humana on 1 January 2026. Existing members were enrolled automatically. Full detail in our TRS MEHP guide.
- State, county and classified school retirees (KPPA). The 2026 options are Medical Only, KPPA Essential, and KPPA Premium, with the two plan options both being Humana group Medicare Advantage PPOs that include drug coverage. Both require you to have Part A and Part B. See our KPPA guide.
If either of those describes you, most of the plan comparison above does not apply to you, and the important question becomes whether your retirement system coverage still fits or whether you are better off elsewhere. That is worth a conversation rather than a form.
Free Medicare help in Clark County that is not us
We are not the only free help available, and you should know about the rest of it. Nobody at either of these will sell you anything.
Kentucky SHIP
Free, unbiased Medicare counseling from trained volunteers, funded by the state. They do not sell insurance and have no stake in what you choose.
Statewide: 877-293-7447
Locally, through the Bluegrass Area Agency on Aging: 859-266-1116
James B. Allen, Jr. Generations Center
Clark County's senior center, on Meadow Street in Winchester. Meals, exercise, health screenings, transport, and help finding your way to the right agency. Open to Clark County residents 60 and over.
Phone: (859) 744-3235
Two lists, and about half an hour
When we sit down, bring two things: the doctors you want to keep, and every prescription you take with the dose. That is genuinely all the preparation needed. Everything else is our job.
From those two lists we check which of the 39 Clark County plans actually cover your doctors, map each prescription to its tier and to the pharmacy you want to use, and show you the total yearly cost rather than just the premium. If what you have now is already the best fit, we will tell you that and you will not hear from us again until something changes.
It costs nothing. Carriers pay us the same regardless of which plan you choose, which is exactly why we can afford to tell you to stay put.
Clark County is the one place I work where people routinely split their care between two towns. Winchester handles the emergency room, the deliveries, the imaging, the rehab. Lexington handles the cardiologist and the cancer center, 21 miles up the road. Most people here will use both within a few years of turning 65.
So what I run into, over and over, is somebody who checked the Winchester hospital, got a yes, and stopped there. That is a completely reasonable place to stop. It is also exactly where 11 of the 39 plans sold in this county will let you down, because UnitedHealthcare and WellCare are accepted at Centerpoint and have been out of network at Baptist Health Lexington since January 2024. Whoever sold that plan over the phone was never going to ask about the second half of the drive. Ask about both ends before you sign, and if you have already signed, ask now rather than in the waiting room.
You do not need an agent to ask that question. You do need somebody to ask it. If you are not sure what a Medicare advisor is or what one would do for you, that is the most common thing I get asked, and it is worth two minutes before you call anybody, us included.