Health Insurance Companies:
Better or Worse after Obamacare?
The Affordable Healthcare Act, also known as Obamacare, you either love it or hate it. Few are in between. There are stories of some people saying that Obamacare literally saved their life, while others have said that it financially ruined them. For every person that says Obamacare saved them from failing to secure health insurance coverage due to a pre-existing condition there is another person that says the cost was so high that they were forced to choose between insurance and groceries.
The goal of this study
The goal of this study is to find out the which major health insurance companies have grown as a result of Obamacare and which have fallen victim. The results of the study include a state-by-state analysis of health insurance providers and a conclusion that estimates which providers are growing or decreasing in popularity. The studied health insurance companies that had reasonable data to work with included:
- Aetna
- Anthem
- Cigna
- Humana
- United Health
The rocket science
No worries if you’re not into rocket science. We’ll break down the results with easy-to-understand charts down further. Otherwise, in the context of this study, popularity refers to the internet dominance of a provider with data from Google Trends. This is calculated as a percentage of the total searches of all covered providers using the formula below.
P = 100(I)/(T)
Where:
P = popularity
I = search instances of the specified health insurance company
T = total search instances for all health insurance companies
Because all the providers were analyzed as “Topics” instead of “Querries”, even vague queries for the providers were included in the analysis (e.g. UHG Esso was included by Trends even if there is no UnitedHealth Group mentioned in the query). Also note that ratings do not correspond and are not meant to reflect the performance of the number of covered individuals, care or service provided, financial assets of the companies, or any other data. These ratings only correspond to how much internet attention the companies are getting and may involve positive and negative events that caused spikes in their popularity.
Let’s get started.
This helps us establish a baseline to compare trendlines against to see popularity increases and decreases.
Further down we’ll visualize these popularity scores with charts.
| State | United Health Group | Anthem | Aetna | Cigna | Humana |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 12 | 15 | 17 | 26 | 30 |
| Alaska | 5 | 8 | 68 | 14 | 5 |
| Arizona | 12 | 10 | 29 | 34 | 15 |
| Arkansas | 11 | 12 | 23 | 22 | 32 |
| California | 7 | 47 | 24 | 16 | 6 |
| Colorado | 8 | 29 | 19 | 32 | 12 |
| Connecticut | 6 | 21 | 41 | 29 | 3 |
| Delaware | 8 | 9 | 53 | 20 | 10 |
| District of Columbia | 10 | 16 | 42 | 24 | 8 |
| Florida | 10 | 6 | 27 | 22 | 35 |
| Georgia | 7 | 18 | 26 | 21 | 28 |
| Hawaii | 19 | 19 | 22 | 15 | 25 |
| Idaho | 11 | 18 | 34 | 19 | 18 |
| Illinois | 10 | 14 | 34 | 23 | 19 |
| Indiana | 5 | 58 | 11 | 10 | 16 |
| Iowa | 21 | 15 | 29 | 14 | 21 |
| Kansas | 11 | 10 | 35 | 20 | 24 |
| Kentucky | 2 | 33 | 10 | 5 | 50 |
| Louisiana | 13 | 6 | 24 | 14 | 43 |
| Maine | 4 | 47 | 28 | 15 | 6 |
| Maryland | 12 | 12 | 38 | 30 | 8 |
| Massachussets | 11 | 17 | 34 | 28 | 10 |
| Michigan | 11 | 16 | 33 | 18 | 22 |
| Minnesota | 44 | 11 | 15 | 16 | 14 |
| Mississippi | 12 | 9 | 19 | 21 | 39 |
| Missouri | 10 | 28 | 22 | 25 | 15 |
| Montana | 7 | 15 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| Nebraska | 14 | 11 | 45 | 15 | 15 |
| Nevada | 14 | 32 | 25 | 14 | 15 |
| New Hampshire | 7 | 46 | 13 | 27 | 7 |
| New Jersey | 11 | 9 | 53 | 22 | 5 |
| New Mexico | 21 | 11 | 21 | 23 | 24 |
| New York | 15 | 12 | 42 | 24 | 7 |
| North Carolina | 13 | 13 | 29 | 26 | 19 |
| North Dakota | 10 | 15 | 32 | 20 | 23 |
| Ohio | 7 | 40 | 25 | 11 | 17 |
| Oklahoma | 10 | 9 | 35 | 22 | 24 |
| Oregon | 12 | 18 | 31 | 26 | 13 |
| Pennsylvania | 8 | 9 | 53 | 21 | 9 |
| Rhode Island | 22 | 14 | 29 | 26 | 9 |
| South Carolina | 10 | 12 | 25 | 25 | 28 |
| South Dakota | 9 | 16 | 22 | 24 | 29 |
| Tennessee | 9 | 10 | 19 | 37 | 25 |
| Texas | 10 | 8 | 37 | 24 | 21 |
| Utah | 10 | 13 | 35 | 27 | 15 |
| Vermont | 7 | 16 | 23 | 43 | 11 |
| Virginia | 5 | 44 | 25 | 17 | 9 |
| Washington | 12 | 15 | 39 | 21 | 13 |
| West Virginia | 6 | 17 | 35 | 14 | 28 |
| Wisconsin | 15 | 28 | 15 | 10 | 32 |
| Wyoming | 8 | 13 | 18 | 50 | 11 |
Health Insurance Company Popularity Nationwide
This section contains illustrations of the popularity of health insurance providers by state. The color of each state represents the most popular health insurance company for that state.
Health Insurance Companies Popularity by State
Darker = more popular.
We can also dig deeper to see more how popular each health insurance company was within each individual state.
Each map shows which states the insurance companies are most popular in.
Click any map to enlarge.
Aetna’s Popularity
Most Popular In:
- Alaska
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- New Jersey
- Delaware
Least Popular In:
- Kentucky
- Indiana
- New Hampshire
- Wisconsin
- Minnesota
Anthem’s Popularity
Most Popular In:
- Indiana
- Maine
- New Hampshire
- California
- Virginia
Least Popular In:
- Louisiana
- Florida
- Texas
- Alaska
- Oklahoma
Cigna’s Popularity
Most Popular In:
- Wyoming
- Vermont
- Tennessee
- Arizona
- Colorado
Least Popular In:
- Kentucky
- Indiana
- Wisconsin
- Ohio
- Alaska
Humana’s Popularity
Most Popular In:
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Mississippi
- Florida
- Wisconsin
Least Popular In:
- Connecticut
- Alaska
- New Jersey
- California
- Maine
United’s Popularity
Most Popular In:
- Minnesota
- Iowa
- Rhode Island
- New MExico
- Hawaii
Least Popular In:
- Kentucky
- Alaska
- Maine
- Virginia
- Indiana
Alabama health insurance companies
Alaska health insurance companies
Arizona health insurance companies
Arkansas health insurance companies
California health insurance companies
Colorado health insurance companies
Connecticut health insurance companies
Delaware health insurance companies
District of Columbia (Washington DC) health insurance companies
Georgia health insurance companies
Hawaii health insurance companies
Florida health insurance companies
Idaho health insurance companies
Indiana health insurance companies
Illinois health insurance companies
Kansas health insurance companies
Kentucky health insurance companies
Iowa health insurance companies
Louisiana health insurance companies
Maine health insurance companies
Maryland health insurance companies
Michigan health insurance companies
Massachusetts health insurance companies
Mississippi health insurance companies
Minnesota health insurance companies
Montana health insurance companies
Nebraska health insurance companies
Missouri health insurance companies
Nevada health insurance companies
New Hampshire health insurance companies
New Mexico health insurance companies
New Jersey health insurance companies
New York health insurance companies
North Carolina health insurance companies
North Dakota health insurance companies
Ohio health insurance companies
Oregon health insurance companies
Oklahoma health insurance companies
Pennsylvania health insurance companies
South Carolina health insurance companies
Rhode Island health insurance companies
South Dakota health insurance companies
Texas health insurance companies
Tennessee health insurance companies
Utah health insurance companies
Vermont health insurance companies
Virginia health insurance companies
Washington health insurance companies
West Virginia health insurance companies
Wisconsin health insurance companies
Wyoming health insurance companies
Obamacare’s Impact on Health Insurance Companies
We were curious how the popularity of these health insurance companies were impacted by Obamacare,
so we reviewed their trendlines back to 2010. Here are the overall trendlines of the five featured health insurance companies.
Obamacare trendline of ALL health insurance companies
Gold = Aetna health insurance company
Red = Anthem health insurance company
Green = Cigna health insurance company
Purple = Humana health insurance company
Blue = United Health health insurance company
Obamacare trendline of INDIVIDUAL health insurance companies
We can also look more granularly at the trendlines of the individual health insurance companies.
Note – the points on these trendlines are relative to the highest popularity in the graph (popularity by Anthem on February 1-7 2015).
Hence, the highest point is at a score of 100 while a provider with a score of 50 is half as popular as the overall peak point in the graph.
Pre- and Post-Obamacare impact
While it’s nice to look at the overall trendline of the last decade or two, we also wanted to look directly at the “before and after” of Obamacare to see if the trajectories took any obvious changes after the Affordable Healthcare Act was introduced.
For example, you’ll see down below that Anthem health insurance had noticeable growth before Obamacare, but that trendline has since flattened after the introduction of the Affordable Healthcare Act.
United Health health insurance company pre-Obamacare
United Health health insurance company post-Obamacare
Humana health insurance company pre-Obamacare
Humana health insurance company post-Obamacare
Cigna health insurance company pre-Obamacare
Cigna health insurance company post-Obamacare
Anthem health insurance company pre-Obamacare
Anthem health insurance company post-Obamacare
Aetna health insurance company pre-Obamacare
Aetna health insurance company post-Obamacare
Results
We assigned a Growth Score to individual providers based on the slope of the movement of their relative popularity. The Growth Score is equivalent to slope*1000. A positive Growth Score corresponds to growing popularity.
Growth score of all five featured health insurance companies, in order of most growth to least:
- Cigna 14.12
- United Health 5.32
- Anthem -1.92
- Aetna -4.64
- Humana -34.92
Conclusion
- Anthem, Aetna, and UHG all have stable scores, but with a growth score of -34.92.
- Humana is drastically decreasing in internet popularity. If the trend continues, Humana will lose 0.034918018 in relative popularity score each month.
- Ultimately, Cigna has achieved the most growth with a score of 14.12, making it the most popular health insurance company of all the covered providers, and by a large margin.
What do you think?
Share your comments below.
