Most Americans say their health plan is not customized to fit their specific needs.
A new survey by HealthMine finds 61 percent believe their insurance is designed with the general population in mind, rather than the individual policyholder. Thirty-nine percent say their plan offers personalized incentives and recommendations based on their individual needs.
Similarly, only a third say communication from their health plan is "highly personal." Thirty percent say the communication is impersonal or mass-oriented, while 16 percent say it is customized only to their gender or demographic profile, and 22 percent say it is almost entirely aligned with billing.
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The survey results suggest insurers are not harnessing the immense amount of available health data to better connect with their customers, says Brennan Collins, vice president of product at HealthMine.
"Health data creates value when plan sponsors combine and translate it into useful insights that improve health outcomes and lower costs for each member," he says in a statement accompanying the survey results. "That's health intelligence."
As employers have cut benefits and shifted an increasing share of health costs onto employees in recent years, they have also increasingly begun to offer workers greater ability to customize their health plans as a way to get more bang for their buck.
Online exchanges are one way that beneficiaries have gained discretion over their benefits. A big example came in July, when Starbucks unveiled an online exchange designed by Aon for employees to pick customized plans from.
The coffee chain also said, however, that it was expanding health benefits — paying 70 percent of premiums and covering 100 percent of preventative services — rather than viewing the exchange as a substitute for traditional insurance.
The most significant online exchange, of course, is the Affordable Care Act marketplace, which is imperiled by President-elect Donald Trump and the GOP Congress' vow to repeal the landmark health law.
The marketplace, despite generating plenty of complaints from those who were unsatisfied with the available options, has been championed as empowering consumers to take control of their own health care spending.
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