Nudging Leads Consumers In Colorado To Shop But Not Switch ACA Marketplace Plans.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) dramatically expanded the use of regulated marketplaces in health insurance, but consumers often fail to shop for plans during open enrollment periods. Typically these consumers are automatically reenrolled in their old plans, which potentially exposes them to unexpected increases in their insurance premiums and cost sharing. We conducted a randomized intervention to encourage enrollees in an ACA Marketplace to shop for plans. We tested the effect of letters and e-mails with personalized information about the savings on insurance premiums that they could realize from switching plans and the effect of generic communications that simply emphasized the possibility of saving. The personalized and generic messages both increased shopping on the Marketplace's website by 23 percent, but neither type of message had a significant effect on plan switching. These findings show that simple "nudges" with even generic information can promote shopping in health insurance marketplaces, but whether they can lead to switching remains an open question.
Keith M. Marzilli Ericson is an assistant professor of markets, public policy, and law in the Questrom School of Business at Boston University, in Massachusetts, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Keith M
KM
Marzilli Ericson
Jon Kingsdale is an associate professor of the practice in the Department of Health Law, Policy, and Management, School of Public Health, at Boston University, and director of the Wakely Consulting Group, in Boston.
Jon
J
Kingsdale
Tim Layton is an assistant professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, in Boston.
Tim
T
Layton
Adam Sacarny (ajs2102@columbia.edu) is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, in New York City; a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and an affiliate at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), in Cambridge.
Adam
A
Sacarny
D000328:Adult; D003120:Colorado; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D017046:Cost Savings / Q000191:economics; D062265:Health Insurance Exchanges / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D019458:Insurance Coverage / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008875:Middle Aged; D058991:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; D014481:United States
Consumer Issues; Insurance Coverage < Insurance; Insurance Market < Insurance; Nudges