eHealth Insurance

UPDATE: Please see Esther F's comment below this post for some important caveats/points regarding survey bias.

I had to think long and hard about what headline to use for this blog post. The first ones which came to mind were pretty crude, along the lines of "I've got mine, f*ck you!". After giving it some thought, I went with something a bit more genteel.

eHealth is one of the largest private online insurance brokers in the country. They sell ACA-compliant healthcare policies, but also sell other types of coverage, including non-ACA "short-term" plans, which regular readers (as well as eHealth) are aware I am not a fan of, to put it mildly.

Regardless, while I may not care for some of their offerings, they seem to be a reasonable company overall, and they regularly provide handy customer surveys on various ACA/healthcare topics which I find useful from time to time.

Today, no doubt in response to the new "Medicare for All" bill just released by the House Democrats, eHealth has released a new survey about Medicare attitudes:

eHealth Insurance is a leading private online health insurance exchange, and is licensed to sell health insurance in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They also publicly post survey results of both their membership and insurance carriers from time to time. While eHealth isn't necessarily fully representative of the entire individual health insurance market, the fact that they cover every state +DC means their surveys should provide at least some big picture insight into the landscape.

(For those wondering: No, this is not an endorsement, they aren't paying me to promote them, and I haven't a clue whether or not they're a good or bad company to do business with.)

In any event, eHealth recently conducted an anonymous survey of health insurance companies operating in the Affordable Care Act market, asking about their plans for market participation in 2019. Insurers invited to participate in the survey are responsible collectively for insuring more than 200 million Americans. Here's some of their findings for what they're worth:

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