To help us design our health insurance plans for next year, we asked members on our current plans what they liked, didn’t like, and valued most in their insurance.  We’ll be doing this every year from now on, to make sure we know what’s important to members as we design plans.  Over 1,600 people took the survey.  Here are the results.

Why members chose their plans:

Members on the comprehensive plans (the Empire BlueCross BlueShield POS and EPOs) chose their plans based on the following:

1. Comprehensiveness of the plan
2. Copays for prescriptions and doctor visits
3. Deductibles for prescriptions
In addition, people with the POS plan based their decision on out-of-network coverage.

Members with high-deductible plans (from PerfectHealth) chose them because of:

1. Monthly premium
2. Amount of deductible

What members like best about their plans (percent who are satisfied or very satisfied*):

Empire POS:
1. Provider network—primary care (78%)
2. Types of services covered (68%)
3. Overall plan (65%)
4. Provider network—specialists (64%)

Empire EPOs:
1. Provider network—primary care (71%)
2. Provider network—specialists (54%)
3. High-deductible plans
4. Monthly premium (65.3%)

What members don’t like about their plans (percent who are dissatisfied*:

Empire POS:
1. Monthly premium (47%)
2. Out-of-network deductibles (33%)

Empire EPOs
1. Medical deductible (46%)
2. Medical copays (41%)
3. Prescription deductible (37%)
4. High-deductible plans
5. Amount of deductible (38%)

Willingness to participate in a wellness program 

We also asked whether people want to participate in a wellness program that would offer information and guidance based on a person’s medical history.  The majority of members on all plans were interested, but the number of people willing to participate was inversely proportional to the comprehensiveness of the plan.  From highest percentage interested to lowest:

1. High-deductible plans
2. Empire EPOs
3. Empire POS

*For these questions, the choices were very satisfied, satisfied, neutral, or unsatisfied.