Better Health Insurance Choices

Consumers struggle to understand and select from among their health insurance choices. While low health insurance literacy is one well documented problem, the major issue is the underlying complexity of health insurance products. While the Affordable Care Act included significant reforms that standardized some aspects of coverage and required new disclosures to help consumers navigate their choices, much remains to be done.

Products from Consumers Union:

• Health Insurance Literacy: A Call to Action
• Report: What’s Behind the Door: Consumers’ Difficulty Selecting Health Plans
• Report: The Evidence is Clear: Too Much Choice Undermines Consumer Decision-making
• Report: Choice Architecture: Design Decisions That Affect Consumers’ Health Plan Choices
• Recommendations: Consumer Criteria for Value-Based Insurance Designs
• Recommendations: Making Provider Directories Meaningful to Consumers
• Recommendations: Network Adequacy Standards and Transparency Needed to Protect Consumers
• Graphical Enrollment Assistance Tools
  • Video explaining premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums

These qualitative studies explore consumers’ reactions to certain types of health plan information:

• Study: Helping Consumers Understand the New Premium Tax Credit
• Study: Early Consumer Testing of the Coverage Facts Label: A New Way of Comparing Health Insurance
• Study: Early Consumer Testing of New Health Insurance Disclosure Forms
• Study: Early Consumer Testing of Actuarial Value Concepts