Valley Residents Unable To Choose

Favorite Managed Care Plan

When asked which managed-care plan they would choose if cost was not an issue, fully two fifths (41%) of the Valley’s residents said they do not know, accounting for almost as many respondents as the top four plans combined (44%). These results come from the latest O’Neil Associates Valley Healthcare Monitor, which asked 459 Maricopa County adults the following question:

If money were no obstacle, and if you had unrestricted choice of any managed healthcare plan for yourself or your family, which plan would you choose?

Even though it was mentioned by only 17% of the respondents, Blue Cross / Blue Shield was the Valley’s most popular choice, followed closely by CIGNA (14%). Only two other plans received mention by more than five percent—Intergroup (7%) and FHP (6%)—leaving fifteen percent divided between more than a dozen other plans. These results were highly consistent across all regions of the Valley, with only one noteworthy exception: Intergroup (11%) enjoys greater popularity than CIGNA (7%) in the East Valley; CIGNA, instead, derives most of its support from Phoenix and the West Valley.

Preferred Managed Care Plans of Phoenix-Area Residents*

Health Plan

%

Blue Cross / Blue Shield

17

CIGNA

14

Intergroup

7

FHP

6

Aetna

4

Humana

2

Partners

2

Other Plans

7

Don’t Know

41

* Excludes the 15% of all respondents who said they would not choose managed care under any circumstances.

When these results are compared to those generated by a follow-up question concerning which managed-care plans respondents definitely would not choose (see graph above), it becomes evident that local residents’ expressed plan preferences are largely a reflection of name awareness. That is, the plans that are most frequently mentioned by Valley residents as being the managed-care plans they most likely would select tend to be the same ones that most frequently are mentioned as the plans they definitely would not select. For example, we already noted that CIGNA is the Valley’s second-most preferred managed-care plan, the plan of choice for fourteen percent of our survey’s respondents. But another ten percent of our respondents singled out CIGNA as the one plan they definitely would not choose, making it the Valley’s most unpreferred plan as well. The only plan to show a notable break from this pattern and demonstrate high levels of popularity and low levels of unpopularity is Blue Cross / Blue Shield; befitting their long, favorable history in the traditional fee-for-service market, the Blues were selected as the preferred plan by seventeen percent of the respondents and the unpreferred plan by only two percent.

Another way to look at the results to these two survey questions is to crosstabulate them against respondents’ current managed-care plans. That is, how do the different plans compare with each other in terms of: (a) the proportion of their current enrollees who would choose that plan again even if price and availability were not an issue, and (b) the proportion of current enrollees who definitely would not choose the plan if price was not an issue. These figures are summarized in the table on the following page.

Overall, just under half (47%) of our sample of 275 Valley residents currently enrolled in managed care said their current plan would be their most preferred plan even if price and availability were not an issue. In contrast, only six percent singled out their current plan as the one plan they definitely would not choose. The ratio between the absolute numbers underlying these two figures is 8.0, meaning that for every one respondent who singled out their current plan as the one they would not choose, there were eight who said their current plan would in fact be their preferred choice in a price-neutral environment.

When we examine these figures for the four market leaders among our responding sample of Valley residents, two of these plans stand out as being particularly successful at producing satisfied customers. Specifically, both Intergroup (18.0) and Blue Cross / Blue Shield (12.5) enjoy high preference ratios among their current enrollees, and each enjoys the support of sixty percent of their enrollees who said their current plan is in fact their most preferred plan. In contrast, only 41 percent of FHP’s current enrollees said they would choose FHP if price and availability were not an issue; more importantly, fully twelve percent—twice the overall average—of FHP’s current enrollees singled out FHP as the plan they definitely would not choose under a price-independent scenario, resulting in a dismally low preference ratio of only 3.5. Finally, CIGNA—the market leader among our sample of respondents with a share of fifteen percent—performs close to the overall averages, with a preference level among its current enrollees of 55 percent, a non-preference level of seven percent, and a preference ratio of 7.8.

Phoenix-Area Residents’ Attitudes Toward Their Current Managed-Care Plans

If Cost Were Not an Issue, Would you choose your current plan?  Would you definitely NOT choose your current plan?

Health Plan

% of Respondents Currently Enrolled in plan

Choose Current

NOT Choose Current

*Ratio

CIGNA

15

55

7

7.8

Blue Cross / Blue Shield

9

60

3

18

Intergroup

7

60

3

18

FHP

7

41

12

3.5

Other Plans

22

33

4

8

Total Managed Care

60

47

6

8

Not in Managed Care

36

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Don’t Know

4

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* Higher figures are desirable as this "preference ratio" is defined as the number of respondents who would choose their current plan above all other choices divided by the number of respondents who would definitely NOT choose their current plan. For example, for every one Intergroup member who said they would definitely not choose Intergroup again, we found eighteen Intergroup members who said they definitely would choose Intergroup above all other plans.

 

Conclusions: Much as we reported in our last Valley Healthcare Monitor, which concerned local hospitals, it appears that area residents possess a highly fragmented impression of the managed-care plans serving the greater Phoenix metro region. There is minimal agreement over which plans are "the best" and which ones should be avoided. In fact, area residents’ attitudes toward the various plans appears to be largely a function of each plan’s relative size and public profile; the bigger the plan, the more popular it is—and the more unpopular. That said, a few plans such as Intergroup and Blue Cross / Blue Shield appear to be doing a better-than-average job of pleasing their current customers, while others lag behind.

 

These results are based on 459 interviews we conducted with randomly selected heads of household in metropolitan Phoenix. The "sampling error" associated with a survey of this size is approximately ±4.6 percent. This means that the chances are approximately 95 in 100 that we would have obtained the same results, within a margin of ±4.6%, had we interviewed every adult resident of Maricopa County.