Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Target Health Insurance (Moving Beyond Blind Men and Elephants: Providing Total Estimated Annual…

Managed Care Weekly Digest

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Target Health Insurance (Moving Beyond Blind Men and Elephants: Providing Total Estimated Annual Costs Improves Health Insurance Decision Making)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Managed Care Weekly Digest -- Research findings on Health Insurance are discussed in a new report. According to news originating from Richmond, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, "Health insurance is among the most important financial and health-related decisions that people make. Choosing a health insurance plan that offers sufficient risk protection is difficult, in part because total expected health care costs are not transparent."

Financial supporters for this research include Urban Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (see also Health Insurance).

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Virginia Commonwealth University, "This study examines the effect of providing total costs estimates on health insurance decisions using a series of hypothetical choice experiments given to 7,648 individuals responding to the fall 2015 Health Reform Monitoring Survey. Participants were given two health scenarios presented in random order asking which of three insurance plans would best meet their needs. Half received total estimated costs, which increased the probability of choosing a cost-minimizing plan by 3.0 to 10.6 percentage points, depending on the scenario (p < .01)."

According to the news editors, the research concluded: "With many consumers choosing or failing to switch out of plans that offer insufficient coverage, incorporating insights on consumer decision making with personalized information to estimate costs can improve the quality of health insurance choices."

For more information on this research see: Moving Beyond Blind Men and Elephants: Providing Total Estimated Annual Costs Improves Health Insurance Decision Making. Medical Care Research and Review, 2017;74(5):625-635. Medical Care Research and Review can be contacted at: Sage Publications Inc, 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320, USA. (Sage Publications - www.sagepub.com/; Medical Care Research and Review - mcr.sagepub.com)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from A.J. Barnes, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, United States. Additional authors for this research include Y. Hanoch, T. Rice and S.K. Long.

Keywords for this news article include: Richmond, Virginia, United States, North and Central America, Health Insurance, Virginia Commonwealth University.