📋Quick Summary
- Costco and SCAN Health Plan announced a Medicare partnership on August 18, 2026 — the retailer's first.
- The plan: Medicare Advantage products in two states, a Medicare supplement (Medigap) plan in a third.
- Those three markets contain roughly 5 million Medicare enrollees combined.
- The states have not been named. Neither has a launch date.
- Everything is pending approval from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
- Costco's senior VP of pharmacy called the effort “a pilot program.”
- SCAN is a nonprofit that currently serves about 460,000 members across six states.
- A Costco-branded plan would still be a Medicare Advantage plan — same networks, same prior authorization rules.
- Plans would be sold in Costco warehouses, through agents, and online.
What Was Actually Announced
On Tuesday, August 18, SCAN Group issued a press release announcing an expanded partnership with Costco Wholesale to offer co-branded Medicare products. The Wall Street Journal reported the details first, and the story moved quickly across national outlets.
The concrete commitments are narrower than the headlines suggest. The two companies said they would sell jointly branded Medicare Advantage products in two states, plus a Medicare supplement plan — a Medigap policy — in a third state. Executives told the Journal those three markets together contain approximately 5 million Medicare enrollees, but they declined to identify the markets or provide a timeline, citing restrictions on disclosure while the plans await approval from the Medicare agency.
SCAN Health Plan is a nonprofit insurer headquartered in Long Beach, California, serving roughly 460,000 members across 33 counties in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, and Washington. That existing footprint is worth noting carefully: it tells you where SCAN operates today, not where the Costco-branded plans will be sold. The companies have not confirmed any overlap, and reading SCAN's current map as a preview of Costco's rollout would be guessing.
Beyond the insurance products themselves, both companies described a longer-term ambition to integrate coverage with services Costco already offers seniors — pharmacy, optical, hearing aids, and over-the-counter products, including something SCAN referred to as "Medflex" over-the-counter benefits. Those integrations are also described as pending regulatory approval and rolling out "over the coming years" rather than at launch.
Richard Stephens, Costco's senior vice president for pharmacy, framed the effort modestly in comments to the Journal: the company sees it as a pilot, plans to learn from it, and wants to confirm it has the right product for its members before scaling.
What is Medicare Advantage — and how does it differ from Original Medicare?
Sources: Healthcare Finance News, CNBC, Detroit News / WSJ reporting, PYMNTS.
Because this story is generating enormous search traffic, expect it to be exploited. A high-profile Medicare announcement is exactly the kind of hook scammers and aggressive lead-generation operations use — a call or text offering to "pre-register" you, put you on a Costco Medicare waiting list, or reserve your spot.
None of that is real. The plans have not been approved, the states have not been named, and no enrollment mechanism exists. If anyone contacts you offering early access, it is not Costco and it is not SCAN. Do not give out your Medicare number, Social Security number, or banking information.
When these plans do become available, they will be sold through Costco warehouses, licensed insurance agents, and official websites — and only during a legitimate enrollment period. Is Medicare Really Calling You in 2026 — Or Is It a Scam? →
Why Costco Is Doing This Now
The timing is genuinely interesting, because Costco is moving into Medicare Advantage at a moment when much of the industry has been backing away from it.
Medicare Advantage has been under real financial pressure for the past two years. Insurers saw margins compress as medical utilization surged, members used more services than projected, and federal reimbursement growth tightened. The industry response was visible to beneficiaries: supplemental benefits like over-the-counter allowances and fitness programs were cut, plans exited counties, and hospital systems terminated contracts. Cigna sold its Medicare business outright last year.
Against that backdrop, a retailer with 82.9 million paid memberships choosing to enter a $500 billion market is a notable bet. The strategic logic isn't hard to see. Costco already sells seniors prescriptions, eyeglasses, and hearing aids — the exact categories Medicare Advantage plans use as supplemental benefits to attract enrollees. Bundling the insurance with the retail services it already provides is a genuine structural advantage that traditional insurers can't easily replicate.
There's also the brand asset, which is arguably the whole point. Medicare Advantage marketing has a trust problem — years of aggressive television advertising, celebrity pitchmen, and complaints about misleading benefit claims. Costco has spent four decades building a reputation for straightforward pricing. CNBC's Jim Cramer put the competitive question bluntly: would you want to go up against Costco in Medicare Advantage?
For SCAN, the calculus is simpler. It's a midsized nonprofit with about half a million members. Partnering with Costco offers access to millions of Medicare-eligible shoppers it could never reach on its own.
Related: Why Did My 2026 Medicare Plan Cut My Benefits? and Is Medicare Advantage Finally Stabilizing for 2027?
Sources: CNBC, Kiplinger, Fox Business.
Related Medicare Updates
✅What This Means for You
Explore Further
More on both: Can you still switch Medicare plans right now? and Is Your 2026 Medicare Advantage Plan Denying Rehab Care?
What a Costco-Branded Plan Would and Wouldn't Change
It's worth separating what a strong retail brand can plausibly improve from what it structurally cannot.
What it could genuinely improve. The integration story is real. If your plan's over-the-counter allowance, pharmacy, optical benefit, and hearing aid coverage all run through a retailer you already visit, the friction of using those benefits drops substantially. Anyone who has tried to spend an OTC card at an unfamiliar retailer, or navigate a plan's hearing aid benefit through a third-party vendor, understands the appeal. SCAN's CEO framed the goal as creating something simple enough that people can actually access the benefits they're entitled to — which is a legitimate problem worth solving.
Distribution could also matter. Selling plans inside warehouses puts Medicare shopping in a physical place people already trust, which is a meaningfully different experience than a television ad or a cold call.
What it cannot change. A Medicare Advantage plan is a Medicare Advantage plan regardless of whose logo is on it. That means a defined provider network — and if your doctor or preferred hospital isn't in it, the brand doesn't help. It means prior authorization for certain services, with all the delay and denial risk that carries. It means an annual out-of-pocket maximum rather than the unlimited-but-supplementable structure of Original Medicare. And it means the plan is subject to the same federal payment rates and cost pressures that have driven benefit cuts across the industry.
The questions worth asking about a Costco plan, if and when it launches, are the same questions worth asking about any plan: Are my doctors in network? Are my medications on the formulary, and at what tier? What's the out-of-pocket maximum? What's the plan's prior authorization denial rate, which CMS now requires plans to publish?
Brand trust is a reasonable input. It isn't a substitute for those answers.
Related: Is Your 2026 Medicare Advantage Doctor Really In-Network? and What Does 2026 Medicare Plan G Actually Cover?
📊Costco Medicare: What's Confirmed vs. Unknown
Sources: WHIO / WSJ reporting, Healthcare Finance News, Parade.
What to Actually Watch For
If you want to track this without wasting attention on speculation, there are a few specific milestones that would signal real progress.
CMS approval. Nothing can be sold until the Medicare agency signs off. Plan approvals are typically finalized well ahead of an enrollment period, so approval news would be the first genuine signal that a launch is close.
State disclosure. The companies said they can't name markets while approval is pending. When states are named, that's the moment this becomes relevant — or not — to you personally. Given SCAN's existing operations, its current six-state footprint is a reasonable place to watch, but it is not a confirmation and shouldn't be treated as one.
The Annual Enrollment Period calendar. Medicare plans are sold on a fixed schedule. The 2027 Annual Enrollment Period runs October 15 through December 7, 2026, for coverage beginning January 1, 2027. If Costco plans don't appear in that window, the realistic next opportunity is the following year.
Plan details, when published. Once a plan is approved and listed, it appears in Medicare's Plan Finder at Medicare.gov with its full benefit structure, formulary, network, and star rating. That's where you'd evaluate it against alternatives — not from a press release or a news article, including this one.
In the meantime, the practical advice is unglamorous: make your 2027 coverage decisions based on the plans that actually exist. Annual Enrollment opens in under two months, your Annual Notice of Change arrives by September 30, and those documents govern real money starting January 1. A pilot program in undisclosed states, pending approval, is not a reason to delay any of that. If you want free, unbiased help, find a SHIP counselor in your state.
