Health Insurance Impressions

Using social listening to learn about American impressions on health insurance

Most people in the United States rely on private health insurance provided by their employers. To continue our healthcare-related social listening research, let’s look at how consumers talk about their insurance providers using Infegy’s social listening dataset. Social listening data can be a crucial tool for large insurance companies, patient advocates, and medical providers to understand better how US healthcare is viewed directly by its patients. We’ll analyze the volatile post volume pattern associated with negative insurance experiences, positive and negative topics related to insurance conversation, and a high-level sentimental overview of how US patients view their health insurance providers.

Post volume reflects volatile patterns with high exposure

We'll begin our examination of public attitudes toward health insurance by analyzing trends in social media post volumes. Our previous work on trend analysis often revealed steady growth or shrinkage patterns, which typically tell a more gradual story about changing public perception. However, in the case of health insurance, the second half of our date framing displays a more volatile, erratic pattern—a stark contrast to the smooth trends we usually observe in more general subjects that stabilize over time.

We dove into each spike in post volume to reveal the main driver of this volatility: a surge in frustrated and viral posts about insurance companies denying coverage to individuals. Health insurance social media strategists must recognize that such negative sentiment is prevalent and potent, particularly when it goes viral. Health insurance is like the weather - you might get a few posts around sunshine on lovely days, but that volume doesn't compare to what you would see if a tornado runs through town. Health insurance social strategists need to be aware that this type of negativity is out there and be able to react to it on a strategic level.

Topics to analyze customer complaints and compliments

Now that we’ve looked at trend-based volatility, let’s take a look at the underlying topics that people discuss when talking about health insurance. As we mentioned before, a huge percentage (although not all) of this underlying conversation is negative.

Negative topics

On the negative end, let's dive into people's main pain points with health insurance. In Figure 2, you see a general overview of what patients complain about the most - specifically employer-based coverage (“job”), financial cost (“bill”), and coverage networks (“cover,” “coverage). These have been complaints surrounding the healthcare system in the United States for a long time - precisely the structure issues associated with tying health insurance to employment along with narrow networks and income repayment plans. A considerable percentage of these negative topics end up being financial-related. This elevated percentage speaks volumes about the financial stress that patients go through when navigating the US healthcare system, in addition to whatever underlying health conditions they are also navigating.

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