Payers have reason to examine consumer sentiment about their brands more closely, as 2020 ended with warnings that policyholders are dissatisfied with their service experience.

A Wellframe survey found that a majority of insured respondents considered their encounters with health insurers to be "frustrating." Meanwhile, a Leapfrog Group survey last summer faulted payers for not doing enough in areas such as transparency, reducing costs, and putting client needs above their own, as previously reported by Health Payer Specialist.

Then there's concerning information documented last May by JD Power, the most respected consumer rating company within the nearly $1.2 trillion health and accident insurance industry.

Indeed, of the more than 31,000 commercial health plan members that JD Power surveyed, 60% said their insurer didn't provide information on the pandemic, and almost half said their payer did not show concern for their health since the pandemic began, as reported by Health Payer Specialist.

Combine this often underreported disconnect with the fact that payers are boasting high profit margins amid a pandemic and you have the potential recipe for a customer relations disaster.

With this perspective in mind, Health Payer Specialist is showing payers how they fare with a very old-school name in customer feedback: The Better Business Bureau (BBB).

Health Payer Specialist examined how the Top 20 health insurers, as based on 2019 NAIC premiums, performed in terms of the grades given to them by the BBB. The publication also looked at how many payers in the elite group were given official BBB accreditation.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in reviewing the grades were that two Fortune 500 payers, Anthem and Molina Healthcare, received an F grade on the BBB site.

In explaining the F grade for Anthem, the BBB cited how the Indianapolis-focused payer failed to respond to 31 complaints from consumers; and also the recent $40 million settlement between the insurer and state attorneys general over a 2015 cyberbreach that impacted policyholder confidentiality.

When asked for comment on the grade, a spokeswoman for Anthem said the company is highly committed to quality services for policyholders.

"Anthem is dedicated to delivering access to quality care to meet the needs of our consumers every day, and works closely with our broad network of care providers and state and federal regulators," the representative said in an email. Anthem is a top three insurer nationally, with $90 billion plus in premiums in 2019, and offers many different types of products, ranging from commercial insurance to Medicaid managed care.

Molina, primarily a Medicaid and ACA healthcare exchange insurer, saw its F grade earned via three core reasons: a high 11 overall complaints filed against it; a failure to respond to seven of the complaints; and one of the complaints was never resolved.

A Molina representative did not respond to questions about the grade as of press time.

In contrast, eight payers received an A+ grade and 14 of the 20 obtained an A-. So overall, the majority of the insurers are in good standing with the non-profit customer experience-focused organization.

Meanwhile, only three payers have received official accreditation from the BBB for their practices. They include Humana, CareSource, and Independence Blue Cross. All those three companies also received A+ grades.

(Companies are under no obligation to obtain BBB accreditation, and most companies don't seek it. It is unclear if any of the payers not accredited tried to in the past. According to the BBB, to be accredited, the organization must determine that the applying business makes "a commitment to . . . a good faith effort to resolve any consumer complaints." Additionally, "BBB Accredited Businesses must pay a fee for accreditation review/monitoring" as well as for efforts to support the BBB's public awareness goals, the company says.)

See the graphic below to view the most recent grades assigned to the Top 20 payers as based on 2019 marketshare data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Anthem, Molina Get ‘F’ Grades from Better Business Bureau

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