Picture this: Making health insurance choices easier for those who need it

Abstract

Informed health insurance choices are important since they have significant health and financial consequences. Personalized information has been found to improve health insurance decision quality, and ensuring that it benefits vulnerable groups is essential. This study uses experimental data and random forests, to investigate heterogeneous treatment effects of optional personalized information for health insurance decision-support. During the experiment, participants with lower levels of Health Insurance Literacy and less accumulated wealth were less likely to access personalized information when multiple sources were available. Simultaneously, these participants were also found to benefit the most from personalized information, especially when presented using a graphical format, reducing their expected costs significantly. These results hold important implications for policy and practice. Integration of graphical elements into health insurance choice environments, can help individuals make better-informed choices. Additionally, concerted efforts should be made to ensure vulnerable groups have access to the information and support they need.