Kansas is on the other side of a line the country crossed
Nationally, more than half of everybody on Medicare is now in a private plan. In May 2026 the federal monthly enrollment file recorded 70,465,854 people on Medicare in the United States, of whom 36,068,859 were in Medicare Advantage or another health plan and 34,396,995 were in Original Medicare[1]. Dividing the second figure by the first gives 51.2 percent.
Kansas in the same month reads the other way round. Of 608,448 Kansans on Medicare, 404,678 were in Original Medicare and 203,770 were in Medicare Advantage or another health plan[1]. Dividing 203,770 by 608,448 gives 33.5 percent, so the private share here is around two thirds of the national one. Neither percentage is a figure the agency printed. Both are worked from two columns of the same file for the same month, which is the only way the comparison can be made honestly.
What the column is called matters more than usual here
The field is named MA_AND_OTH_BENES, and the dataset describes the split it belongs to as Original Medicare against Medicare Advantage and Other Health Plans[1]. Other health plans are in that column alongside Medicare Advantage. A sentence reporting 203,770 as a pure Advantage enrollment is claiming a finer measurement than the file supports, which is why every figure on this page keeps the longer name.
The file is monthly, it comes from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the version read here was last changed on August 24, 2026 and runs through May 2026[1]. Data month and publication date sit three months apart, and both belong in any sentence built on it.
Who the 608,448 are
Most reached the program by turning 65. In May 2026, 552,491 Kansas beneficiaries were in the aged category and 55,957 were entitled through disability[1].
A further 67,455 Kansas beneficiaries held Medicaid as well as Medicare in the same month, which the file records as dual eligibility[1]. That is the group whose long-term care sits at the seam between the two programs, and the KanCare side of it is described in the coverage section rather than here.
| Measure | Kansans |
|---|---|
| All beneficiaries | 608,448 |
| Original Medicare | 404,678 |
| Medicare Advantage and other health plans | 203,770 |
| Entitled by age | 552,491 |
| Entitled through disability | 55,957 |
| Also enrolled in Medicaid | 67,455 |
| With prescription drug coverage | 487,694 |
| In a stand-alone prescription drug plan | 304,868 |
| Drug coverage inside a Medicare Advantage plan | 182,826 |
| Deemed eligible for the full low-income subsidy | 72,930 |
Three Mays, and what moved between them
Because the file is monthly and runs back to 2013, the same month can be read across years without the distortion that comes from setting a January against a July. Kansas enrollment in May went from 587,990 in 2024 to 599,258 in 2025 and 608,448 in 2026. Original Medicare rose across the same three Mays, from 392,336 to 401,027 to 404,678, and the Advantage and other health plans column went 195,654, 198,231, 203,770[1].
Between the last two of those Mays the private column added 5,539 people and Original Medicare added 3,651, on a base a little under half the size. One line moved the other way entirely: Kansans entitled through disability fell in each of the three Mays, from 60,539 to 58,432 to 55,957[1]. Why that count is falling is not something an enrollment file records, and nothing here should be read as an explanation of it.
| Measure | May 2024 | May 2025 | May 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| All beneficiaries | 587,990 | 599,258 | 608,448 |
| Original Medicare | 392,336 | 401,027 | 404,678 |
| Advantage and other health plans | 195,654 | 198,231 | 203,770 |
| Entitled through disability | 60,539 | 58,432 | 55,957 |
Drug coverage is mostly bought separately here, and nationally it is not
487,694 Kansans had Part D prescription drug coverage in May 2026. Of those, 304,868 held a stand-alone prescription drug plan and 182,826 received the benefit inside a Medicare Advantage plan[1].
The same file for the same month puts 57,191,935 people nationally with Part D coverage, of whom 31,948,206 got it inside an Advantage plan and 25,243,729 held a stand-alone one[1]. The national majority is inside an Advantage plan and the Kansas majority is outside one, which is the same divergence the enrollment split shows, measured through a different benefit.
A further 72,930 Kansas beneficiaries were recorded as deemed eligible for the full low-income subsidy[1]. The Administration for Community Living describes that subsidy, also called Extra Help, as one of the programs that help pay for or reduce health care costs for people with limited income[3].
Where the free counseling comes from, and who is paid to give it
The Kansas program is called Senior Health Insurance Counseling for Kansas, or SHICK, and it publishes a toll-free number, 1-800-860-5260[4]. It is the Kansas arm of a federal program with fifty-four grantees, one in each of the fifty states and one each in Puerto Rico, Guam, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands[3].
The State Health Insurance Assistance Program was created in 1990 under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of that year, was run at first by the federal Medicare agency, and moved to the Administration for Community Living in 2014 under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. Each state grant is set annually by a formula whose factors include the size of the Medicare population, and grantees may contract the work out to community-based partners[3].
Kansas does exactly that. In the grant year running from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024, the grantee on the federal sub-recipient report is the state Department for Aging and Disability Services (KDADS), and twelve Kansas organizations appear beneath it, each with an address and a federal amount[2]. Ten are area agencies on aging, covering the northwest, the northeast, the north central and Flint Hills region, the east central, the south central, the southeast, the southwest, the Central Plains, the Wyandotte and Leavenworth area and the Jayhawk area. The remaining two are the Senior Resource Center for Douglas County in Lawrence and K-State Research and Extension in Sedgwick County. The twelve amounts add to $396,107, which is a sum taken over the Kansas rows of that file rather than a total the file prints.
What the counseling record does not say
How many Kansans were counseled, and by how many counselors, is in neither federal document read for this page. The sub-recipient report carries money and addresses and nothing else[2], and the program page carries a national performance snapshot for 2020 with no state breakdown[3]. Counseling volume is collected in the SHIP Tracking and Reporting System, which the program’s report to Congress for grant year 2021 names as the source of its performance data[5], and those reports are the documents that would settle it. The most recent one linked from the program page is the one for that grant year[3].
So the twelve organizations named under KDADS are what is actually established about counseling capacity in Kansas, and the volume of counseling is what the federal reporting system holds and has not published by state.
Medicare is one of four doors, and not the one most Kansans use first
Medicare is the door a Kansan reaches at 65 or through a disability determination. Before that, coverage runs through an employer, through the marketplace or through KanCare, and a household can fall between the last two entirely. That gap has its own piece in the coverage section, which is reachable from Health for Kansas along with the rest of the publication.