By Cleveland Senior Advisor Care Team · August 7, 2026
Next Generation MyCare went statewide on August 1, 2026, but Greater Cleveland's seven counties converted seven months earlier, on January 1. Two insurers left the program, and one question about your parent's enrollment decides how much of this you have to manage yourself.
The rebuild is finished, and most families never noticed
The Ohio Department of Medicaid spent 2026 rebuilding MyCare Ohio, the program that covers people who have both Medicare and Medicaid. The last group of counties came in on August 1, 2026. The program is now called Next Generation MyCare, and it runs in all 88 counties.
If your parent was already on MyCare, the change arrived quietly. A letter, maybe a new insurance card, and a care coordinator who may or may not have introduced themselves. Most of the families we talk to did not register that anything structural had happened.
Something structural did happen. The list of insurance companies running the program changed. The waiver your parent is on may have a different name than it did in December. And there is one enrollment question underneath all of it that determines whether your parent has one point of contact or three.
This post covers what changed and what to check. For the underlying explanation of what MyCare Ohio is and who qualifies, see our MyCare Ohio overview.
Greater Cleveland was in the first wave, back in January
ODM rolled the new program out in phases, and it organized those phases around Ohio's Area Agency on Aging regions rather than around geography or population. That was deliberate. Home and community-based providers, the ones who deliver waiver services, are coordinated through the Area Agencies, so ODM converted whole aging regions at a time.
Phase 1, effective January 1, 2026, covered the 29 counties that had been running MyCare since 2015. Two of those regions are ours. AAA Region 10a is Cuyahoga, Lorain, Medina, Lake and Geauga. AAA Region 10b is Summit, Portage, Stark and Wayne. Every county this site serves converted on the same day, seven months ago.
So if you are reading news coverage about an August 1 statewide launch and wondering whether it affects your mother in Lakewood or your father in Kent, the answer is that it already did, on New Year's Day. What happened on August 1 was the last set of rural counties in southeastern Ohio joining a program the rest of the state was already in.
That timing matters for one practical reason. If your parent's enrollment went sideways in January, it has been sideways for seven months. Nobody sends a second letter.
Two insurers are gone, and one is closed to new members
Under the old program, several plans competed. Under Next Generation MyCare there are four: Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Buckeye Health Plan, CareSource, and Molina Healthcare of Ohio.
Aetna Better Health of Ohio and UnitedHealthcare Community Plan are no longer MyCare plans. Members enrolled with either one had to pick a new plan for January 2026. ODM mailed enrollment information, but a mailed enrollment decision aimed at a person with cognitive decline is a fragile thing. If your parent was an Aetna or UnitedHealthcare member and you never saw a selection get made, they were auto-enrolled in a plan for their Medicaid benefits by default.
There is also a wrinkle worth knowing before you go shopping. ODM's August 2026 member guidance states that only three of the four are open for selection statewide: Anthem, CareSource and Molina. Buckeye Health Plan is not an option for new members in plan year 2026. Existing Buckeye members were not removed, but you cannot choose Buckeye now if your parent is not already on it.
The plan matters more than families expect, because it decides the provider network. If your parent's cardiologist at University Hospitals or their primary care physician at MetroHealth is out of network on the plan they got assigned, that is a problem you fix by changing plans, not by arguing.
The one question that decides how hard this is: aligned, or not
This is the part almost nobody explains at the kitchen table, and it is the part that matters most.
A Next Generation MyCare plan can cover your parent's Medicaid benefits only, or it can cover both their Medicaid and their Medicare. ODM calls the second one aligning your benefits. The difference in day-to-day workload is enormous.
If both sides run through the MyCare plan, ODM's own member FAQ describes the result plainly: one care coordinator, one organization responsible for the entire benefit, one member ID card, communications from a single source, and one place to file an appeal. If the plan covers Medicaid only, the same document says your parent may have multiple care coordinators, multiple organizations responsible for different pieces including long-term care and behavioral health, up to three ID cards, and multiple organizations to appeal to.
Three cards and three appeal paths is the default outcome for a family that did nothing. It is also the version most likely to produce the phone call where nobody can tell you who authorized what.
Aligning can be done at any time, through Medicare, and takes effect the first day of the following month. Contact Medicare at 800-633-4227, or the Ohio Medicaid Consumer Hotline at 800-324-8680. You do not have to wait for an open enrollment window.
If your parent is on a waiver, the waiver's name changed
This one surprises families. If your parent was on the PASSPORT waiver, the Assisted Living Waiver, or the Ohio Home Care Waiver at the point they were enrolled in Next Generation MyCare, they are now on something called the MyCare Ohio Waiver instead. ODM describes the new waiver as carrying the same benefits, or more.
The waiver did not disappear and the services did not stop. But if you are searching for program documentation, calling an agency, or filling out a form that asks which waiver your parent is on, the answer changed and the old name may get you routed somewhere unhelpful.
The reverse case matters too. If your parent is not eligible for Next Generation MyCare, or is eligible but not enrolled, they stayed on their original waiver. Not everyone converted. Someone with Medicaid but no Medicare, for example, was never in this program to begin with.
For how these programs fit together and what each one does and does not pay for, see Ohio Medicaid waivers and assisted living.
Who your care coordinator is now, and why it may be someone local
Next Generation MyCare plans partner with the Area Agencies on Aging to serve members. ODM states that your care coordinator may come from your plan, from your local Area Agency, or from both.
In practice that means a Cleveland-area family may be working with someone at the Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging, which covers Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina, while a Stow or Kent family works with Direction Home Akron Canton, which covers Summit and Portage. We wrote about that agency split separately, and it survived the MyCare rebuild intact.
If your parent has both benefits aligned and is on a waiver, they may have two people: a care coordinator and a waiver service coordinator. ODM says the two work together. Whether that happens in any particular case is worth verifying rather than assuming.
If you have no idea who your parent's care coordinator is, the number to call is the Care Management line on the back of the member ID card. If you cannot find the card, call the plan directly: Anthem (833) 727-2169, Buckeye (855) 445-3562, CareSource (855) 475-3163, or Molina (866) 856-8295.
What to check this month, in order
Start with the card. Find your parent's member ID card and see how many cards exist. One card means the benefits are aligned. Two or three means they are not, and that is the first thing to fix.
Then confirm the doctors. Transition-of-care protections covered already-approved services and existing prescribers during the changeover, but those protections expire. After the transition period, your parent has to use providers in the plan's network. Check the specialists, not just the primary care physician.
Then find the care coordinator by name and write the name down. A care coordinator you cannot identify is functionally the same as not having one.
Then handle transportation before you need it, not the day of an appointment. Right now, rides under 30 miles run through the county job and family services office, which for most of our readers is Cuyahoga County. If both benefits are aligned, the plan covers rides regardless of mileage, including non-medical trips. If they are not aligned, ODM's guidance indicates the county-administered arrangement continues into plan year 2027.
And if something has already gone wrong inside a facility, the plan is not your only lever. The Long-Term Care Ombudsman for our region is free, independent and confidential, at 1-800-365-3112. See how and when to use the ombudsman.
What we cannot tell you
We cannot tell you whether the new program is better. ODM says it built in stronger network adequacy requirements, shorter prior authorization waits, and improved transportation. Those are the state's stated goals, and the program has only been running in our counties since January. There is no independent outcome data yet, and anyone claiming otherwise is guessing.
We also cannot tell you which plan is best for your parent. That depends entirely on which doctors and which facility they use, and the honest way to answer it is to check each plan's network against your parent's actual provider list rather than to compare marketing material.
If you want a neutral party to walk the comparison with you, the Ohio Senior Health Insurance Information Program is free and is run through the Ohio Department of Insurance, at 800-686-1578. They do not sell anything.
Program details in this post reflect the Ohio Department of Medicaid's member guidance as updated in August 2026. This program has changed repeatedly, and it can change again. Confirm anything that a decision depends on before you act on it.
