Report examines implications of a new healthcare reality
By Mia Burns
The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks has released its 2013 Consumer Health Care Market Report which analyzes consumer awareness and attitudes toward the upcoming Affordable Care Act, also known as ACA. The report looks at the implications for health plan marketers who need to fully understand, segment, and engage a new, uncharted healthcare market. In addition, the report highlights opportunities to mitigate risk and make the most of this new healthcare reality.
As a customer engagement agency of Harte-Hanks, The Agency Inside surveyed more than 600 consumers about factors such as motivation, channel consumption, affordability, and the likelihood to purchase. Participants were screened to ensure they were uninsured, subsidy-eligible, between the ages of 18 and 64, and influential in decisions about healthcare coverage. The research weighs the data by state to approximate the proportion of the uninsured as per the U.S. Census, and respondents represented a cross section of individuals and families.
The analysis showed that there are two consumer segments identified as most attractive to insurers among the subsidy eligible, uninsured: adults who rate their health, and that of their family members, as good, and young adults between the ages of 18 to 39. Both key segments need education on the Affordable Care Act, are uniquely motivated, and will require different marketing approaches in terms of content and channels.
“Working with our data partners and clients, we have identified publicly available data and predictive models that have been verified against actual client usage data to identify the desirable segments of the uninsured population,” says Scott Overholt, VP, healthcare markets, The Agency Inside. “Our strategy is to help focus marketing dollars to target those segments and the individuals within them directly, one to one. This is needed in a largely unknown healthcare marketing environment where all insurers will be competing for the same desirable uninsured consumer segments.”
According to the study, uninsured participants who reported either themselves or their families as healthy are familiar with health insurance as many of them have carried health insurance coverage in the past, however, more than two-thirds do not have health insurance for their children. In addition, these participants are more likely to be educated and when compared to those that are in poor health, they are nearly twice as likely to have a college or graduate degree. Among the other factors that are attributable to this group are: they are more likely to be employed full-time; are less likely to take prescription medications; are pessimistic about the Affordable Care Act; seek specific characteristics in a health insurance company; and are more likely to talk with someone to research health insurance companies.
“Right now, the only things most people know about the law are politically-motivated arguments for the past three years,” Overholt told Med Ad News. “Most of which has little to do with consumers, or even with health itself for that matter. Health plans are putting a lot of energy and effort into education before the products are even available, and this is new for this industry. Insurers are setting up online centers they are driving (or will drive, depending on where they are in their plan) people to through all channels. On those digital destinations, they are using video to explain the ‘what’s in it for you, the consumer’ to help consumers get a better understanding of the individual mandate and the value proposition of the insurer. In addition to the general education around the program, another set of challenges are the uninsured segments that are not English-fluent; do not have their own internet connectivity; and do not have bank accounts. They require separate, specialized outreach.”
Moving forward, the survey validates what The Agency Inside members already knew, according to the report: Those uninsured with the lowest quality of health will be eager to secure health insurance. The takeaway message for insurers is that they are bound to acquire a certain percentage of people that are not healthy into your membership. To help mitigate this risk, insurers should focus on identifying and attracting the younger and healthier consumer segments. Health insurers should focus efforts on the use of tested and proven targeted marketing strategies and tactics to find and attract the most desirable people to their plans.
“First, insurers need to identify the desired targets, then understand them, and then craft the message and offer to appeal to these desirable uninsureds,” says Overholt. “Using predictive models we can identify those consumers likely to be healthy, or interested in maintaining good health, based on some defining characteristics. Demographic and lifestyle information can be added to help with messaging relevance. For a simple example, people with children buy health insurance for a different set of reasons than those without children. In these campaigns, insurers are selling something they hope consumers won’t use and the consumers may not think they really need. This is one of the hardest marketing challenges we’ve ever seen in healthcare, or actually, just about any markets. What can we do? Insurers need to convince the right consumers of the value of their healthcare plan. And that is done through relevant messages in the channels – the multiple channels, in the case of younger uninsured -- consumers choose.”
Although healthcare insurance providers may now have a better understanding of their new audience, this does not necessarily mean that they have gained a good and accurate comprehension, Overholt told Med Ad News. “Insurance providers have spent a lot of resources, to their credit, trying to achieve some degree of certainty about consumer characteristics, motives and probable behavior,” he says. “But there’s no history with these products, prices or sales channels, so there are no hard facts. They won’t know what happened, and who they got signed on until campaigns are launched and we see the results. After the initial enrollment, analytics will become very important to understand the new customer base, map its health risk profile, and adjust strategies for the next round of product pricing and marketing.”
New Health Care Market Report Reveals the Potential Gap between Consumer Pricing Expectations and Affordability
The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks has released its 2013 Consumer Health Care Market Report which analyzes consumer awareness and attitudes toward the upcoming Affordable Care Act, also known as ACA. The report looks at the implications for health plan marketers who need to fully understand, segment, and engage a new, uncharted healthcare market. In addition, the report highlights opportunities to mitigate risk and make the most of this new healthcare reality.
As a customer engagement agency of Harte-Hanks, The Agency Inside surveyed more than 600 consumers about factors such as motivation, channel consumption, affordability, and the likelihood to purchase. Participants were screened to ensure they were uninsured, subsidy-eligible, between the ages of 18 and 64, and influential in decisions about healthcare coverage. The research weighs the data by state to approximate the proportion of the uninsured as per the U.S. Census, and respondents represented a cross section of individuals and families.
The analysis showed that there are two consumer segments identified as most attractive to insurers among the subsidy eligible, uninsured: adults who rate their health, and that of their family members, as good, and young adults between the ages of 18 to 39. Both key segments need education on the Affordable Care Act, are uniquely motivated, and will require different marketing approaches in terms of content and channels.
“Working with our data partners and clients, we have identified publicly available data and predictive models that have been verified against actual client usage data to identify the desirable segments of the uninsured population,” says Scott Overholt, VP, healthcare markets, The Agency Inside. “Our strategy is to help focus marketing dollars to target those segments and the individuals within them directly, one to one. This is needed in a largely unknown healthcare marketing environment where all insurers will be competing for the same desirable uninsured consumer segments.”
According to the study, uninsured participants who reported either themselves or their families as healthy are familiar with health insurance as many of them have carried health insurance coverage in the past, however, more than two-thirds do not have health insurance for their children. In addition, these participants are more likely to be educated and when compared to those that are in poor health, they are nearly twice as likely to have a college or graduate degree. Among the other factors that are attributable to this group are: they are more likely to be employed full-time; are less likely to take prescription medications; are pessimistic about the Affordable Care Act; seek specific characteristics in a health insurance company; and are more likely to talk with someone to research health insurance companies.
“Right now, the only things most people know about the law are politically-motivated arguments for the past three years,” Overholt told Med Ad News. “Most of which has little to do with consumers, or even with health itself for that matter. Health plans are putting a lot of energy and effort into education before the products are even available, and this is new for this industry. Insurers are setting up online centers they are driving (or will drive, depending on where they are in their plan) people to through all channels. On those digital destinations, they are using video to explain the ‘what’s in it for you, the consumer’ to help consumers get a better understanding of the individual mandate and the value proposition of the insurer. In addition to the general education around the program, another set of challenges are the uninsured segments that are not English-fluent; do not have their own internet connectivity; and do not have bank accounts. They require separate, specialized outreach.”
Moving forward, the survey validates what The Agency Inside members already knew, according to the report: Those uninsured with the lowest quality of health will be eager to secure health insurance. The takeaway message for insurers is that they are bound to acquire a certain percentage of people that are not healthy into your membership. To help mitigate this risk, insurers should focus on identifying and attracting the younger and healthier consumer segments. Health insurers should focus efforts on the use of tested and proven targeted marketing strategies and tactics to find and attract the most desirable people to their plans.
“First, insurers need to identify the desired targets, then understand them, and then craft the message and offer to appeal to these desirable uninsureds,” says Overholt. “Using predictive models we can identify those consumers likely to be healthy, or interested in maintaining good health, based on some defining characteristics. Demographic and lifestyle information can be added to help with messaging relevance. For a simple example, people with children buy health insurance for a different set of reasons than those without children. In these campaigns, insurers are selling something they hope consumers won’t use and the consumers may not think they really need. This is one of the hardest marketing challenges we’ve ever seen in healthcare, or actually, just about any markets. What can we do? Insurers need to convince the right consumers of the value of their healthcare plan. And that is done through relevant messages in the channels – the multiple channels, in the case of younger uninsured -- consumers choose.”
Although healthcare insurance providers may now have a better understanding of their new audience, this does not necessarily mean that they have gained a good and accurate comprehension, Overholt told Med Ad News. “Insurance providers have spent a lot of resources, to their credit, trying to achieve some degree of certainty about consumer characteristics, motives and probable behavior,” he says. “But there’s no history with these products, prices or sales channels, so there are no hard facts. They won’t know what happened, and who they got signed on until campaigns are launched and we see the results. After the initial enrollment, analytics will become very important to understand the new customer base, map its health risk profile, and adjust strategies for the next round of product pricing and marketing.”
New Health Care Market Report Reveals the Potential Gap between Consumer Pricing Expectations and Affordability
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