Illinois seniors face fewer Medicare Advantage choices this open enrollment season
On a gray October morning in a bungalow on the Southwest Side, the stack of envelopes looked thicker than the coffee mug beside it. A retired bus driver spread the letters across the table and tried to match last year’s doctors to this year’s list. Somewhere in that paper pile sat a narrower set of choices than the one he remembered. Across the state, Medicare Advantage Illinois has become a story less about glossy television promises and more about what disappears when an insurer leaves a county. For people who built their retirement around a familiar clinic, a preferred pharmacy, and a premium they could recite from memory, the season feels less like shopping and more like triage.
