Covered California health plan consumer survey

If you purchased an Individual and Family Plan through Covered California or off-exchange directly from an insurance company or health plan, I would like you to take a short, anonymous survey on your experience with your health plan in 2014. Your participation and responses are anonymous and in no way can they be used for any marketing of products or services. The purpose of this survey is to gather some consumer experience and health plan ratings since no agency at the state level is really gathering this type of data.

Survey results

I ran the survey link on the front page of my website and had 17 people fill out the survey. That’s not really enough of a population to draw any conclusions. But some of the results were interesting. People who took the survey had the following health plans.

Health Plans
Anthem Blue Cross HMO	6%
Anthem Blue Cross PPO	30%
Blue Shield EPO	6%
Blue Shield PPO	18%
Health Net PPO	18%
Kaiser HMO	12%
Other	10%

No one said they had to change their health plan because they couldn’t find their doctor. Which has been a big issue for some people in Covered California health plans. 31% said it was easy to find a doctor while 19% responded that it was difficult to find a physician to take their health insurance. Only 25% of the respondents said they had to go out of network for care. 43% of the people reported difficulty with resolving administration issues like getting a claim paid.

When it came to rating their health plan 35% said it was poor, 43% found it acceptable and 22% thought it was excellent. Most people were dissatisfied with their health plan and would look for another one for 2015. The most interesting finding was that over 40% of the respondents said their health plan never communicated with them about the no charge preventive office visits. I guess the carriers figure you won’t use the no cost services if you don’t know about them.

Health plan consumer survey

Please answer the ten question if you purchased and Individual and Family Plan through Covered California or directly from a carrier in 2014. With enough responses I will publish the results with the caveat that this was not a scientifically designed and conducted survey. My hope is that the results with help other consumer’s with information about which health plan they should select for 2015. If you were in a Medi-Cal HMO plan note the plan name and “Medi-Cal” in the Other section of the first question.