An increasing number of consumers are terminating health coverage within days, weeks or months of buying health insurance online.
I’ve noticed a trend in online health insurance enrollment that seems to be accelerating. I don’t understand it yet; this post is primary a basis to seek additional information.
The observation: The incidence of early termination of benefits is accelerating. In a growing number of cases, the benefits are canceled within days of online enrollment.
Background: I’ve been involved in online health insurance enrollment since the early 1990s an ran a national enrollment service for about a decade. In those early days online insurance enrollees typically relied on professional advice and assistance via telephone that, in my observation, contributed to increased suitability and satisfaction. Today’s health insurance exchange enrollees typically do not use available human advisory services so there is less data available on the motivations
, psychology or emotional influences of enrollees on the insurance enrollment process.
Possible explanations:
Lack of consumer information – I’ve long been suspicious that online health insurance enrollees do not have sufficient information to make appropriate decisions. I’ve noticed, for example, confusion between primary coverage and supplemental health insurance.
Confusion with the Affordable Care Act – The Trump administration’s push to promote lower cost insurance with lower level of benefits may be misunderstood by consumers. Consumers may not understand for example, that they may enroll in expensive coverage that covers pre-existing medical conditions without limits OR low cost coverage that limits those benefits, but that they can not enroll in low cost insurance that covers pre-existing medical conditions in the entirety.
General distrust – Formerly an online consumer typically felt they could trust advice from a telephone support. I’m not sure that is true anymore. The wave of ‘fake news’ and propaganda about heat care this year is unprecedented.
Short term use – It is possible that consumers are enrolling for coverage immediately before a schedule doctor visit, for example, and cancelling coverage immediately afterward. I have only few anecdotal comments to indicate this might be true. No reliable base of information is available. Some commenters speculate this will be accelerated by the cancellation of the health insurance requirement known as the ‘individual mandate’ under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Solutions: One possibility is to include health insurance advisory services as part of an employer-provided employee benefit plan. Not coincidentally
, this is the approach that Freedom Benefits has adopted for 2018.
Another possibility is restoration and expansion of the health insurance navigator program that was established in 2010. This does not seem politically likely under the current political leadership.
A third possibility is to use improvements in technology to screen applicants and communicate on suitability and policyholder satisfaction issues. Our partners are working on these issues that require a greater investment in Artificial Intelligence and technology.