Medigap Switching Rights by State (2026): the 51-State Table

Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: federal law gives you one six-month window to buy a Medigap policy without medical underwriting, and after it closes an insurer in most states may ask about your health and decline you. A minority of states give you more than that — and the detail that decides whether the extra right is useful is not the window, it is what you are allowed to switch to.

Why the restriction column is the one to read

Nearly every summary of these rules reports the window and stops. The window tells you when you may act; the restriction tells you whether acting is worth anything.

A rule that lets you move to any plan with equal or lesser benefits, from any carrier is a genuine annual opportunity to re-shop your coverage on price. A rule that lets you move only to the same plan letter with your current carrier is close to a formality — it protects you from your own insurer’s pricing and from nothing else. Both get called “a birthday rule”.

Three rules called the same thing that do opposite things

These are all “birthday rules”, and they are not the same product:

• Idaho — 63 days from your birthday, comparable or lesser benefits, from any issuer, at any age. About as open as these get.
• Kentucky — 60 days, same plan letter, and you must apply to an insurer different from your current one. The right exists specifically to let you leave your carrier.
• Utah — 60 days, comparable or lower tier, same issuer only. You may change plan, not company — the exact opposite of Kentucky’s.

Two more conditions that decide whether a listed right reaches you at all: Illinois’ window applies only between ages 65 and 75, and West Virginia’s new right requires the policy to have been in force at least 24 months and covers only policies issued, reissued or modified after 1 June 2026.

Two corrections worth making explicitly

Vermont is not a continuous guaranteed-issue state. It is widely listed as one. Its own Department of Financial Regulation materials describe guaranteed issue only in the federally-aligned situations and say insurers may underwrite outside them. Vermont’s genuine distinguishing feature is community rating — a protection on price, not on access. The two are conflated constantly and they are different promises.

Massachusetts, Minnesota and Wisconsin do not use the federal plan letters at all. They standardise Medigap their own way under a federal waiver. Any table describing their rights as “Plan G” or “an equal or lesser lettered plan” is describing something that does not exist there, so this one does not try.

This table is archived as a citable open dataset: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21781492 (CC BY 4.0). Every row carries its source URL, the date it was read, and its verification status.

The states with extra rights, by what the right actually is

• Continuous guaranteed issue — New York
• Birthday rule — California, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming
• Anniversary rule — Missouri
• Plan-switch right — Rhode Island
• Limited extra right — Arkansas, Hawaii, Massachusetts

Everything else on the table sits at the federal minimum, or could not be verified from the state’s own source. Those are different things and the table distinguishes them.

All 51 jurisdictions

Read from state insurance departments, state statute and regulation sites, and state SHIP programs on 3 August 2026. 26 of 51 rows were confirmed against a state primary source and are stated plainly. The rest are marked not primary-verified and are shown rather than dropped, because a missing row reads as “no extra rights” and that is a claim we have not established.

We deliberately did not source this from insurance agencies. This subject’s search results are dominated by sites that sell the product, and their tables are where the restriction detail most often goes wrong. Every row here traces to a government source or is marked unverified.

The under-65 column is a different question

People who reach Medicare through disability before 65 are not covered by the federal Medigap open-enrollment guarantee in the same way. Some states require insurers to offer Medigap to them anyway; 16 of the verified jurisdictions do. It is carried as its own column because it is routinely merged into the switching-rights question, and someone under 65 asking “can I get a Medigap policy at all?” is asking something the rest of the table does not answer.

What to do with this

If your state has a real annual right, it is worth a diary entry — these windows are short, they do not remind you, and the premium difference between carriers for an identical standardised plan can be substantial. If your state does not, the one-time federal window is the whole of your protection, and the choice you make at 65 is harder to reverse than it looks.

Confirm your own state with its insurance department before acting. Rules change, and a table read on one date is a starting point rather than an authority.

Not primary-verified: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin.

General information drawn from Medicare, CMS and state insurance-department publications, not insurance advice. Medicare rules, plan availability and dollar figures change every year, and state rules differ. Every figure here is year-labelled and every source is named so you can check it against your own situation. We do not sell insurance and receive nothing if you buy a plan.