• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

You cannot shame the shameless.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

This fight is for everything.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Display order and dominated plans

Display order and dominated plans

by David Anderson|  November 12, 20188:16 am| 9 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance

FacebookTweetEmail

Dominated plans are bad choices.  A dominated plan is tied or beaten on all relevant criteria. This means a buyer is either limited in choice or is paying more than they should for a given level of accepted risk.

Decision support tools are supposed to help make good choices easier. Good tools should encourage good choices and either completely eliminate dominated choices or at least make it clear that these are inferior choices.

Healthcare.gov is not helping on this matter.

A Durham, NC resident earning $15,000 buys at Healthcare.gov. Here is a screenshot from Healthcare.gov of the BCBS-NC plan choices. Blue Cross and Blue Shield is offering a single network and a fairly significant Silver Gap so that their cheapest Silver plan is a $0 net premium plan and they also offer three $0 premium Bronze plans.

 

 

https://t.co/eycJJS2vFK emphasizes dominated plans (example single 55 y/o in Durham County earning $15,000 year showing only BCBS-NC plans)

Bronze #1-3 and Silver (CSR) are all $0 premium plans but Silver has a $250 deductible /$600 OOPMax vs Bronze all at $6,000+ pic.twitter.com/e3suRDZo6a

— David Anderson (@bjdickmayhew) November 6, 2018

The CSR Silver plan is the clearly superior plan. It is the plan that (assuming the network is adequate) that this person should buy because it provides a low deductible and a very low out of pocket maximum. The Silver CSR plan is useful protection while the Bronze plans don’t provide protection until someone has spent three to four months of income on medical expenses.

Yet, Healthcare.gov displays the three Bronze plans first. We know that people cue on the top option when they have to make a choice under uncertainty. We hope that the monetary differences is enough to move someone from anchoring on the first displayed plan, a Bronze plan, and moving to the much better for them Silver plan at #4 but we can’t guarantee this.

Emphasizing dominated plans is a problem that Healthcare.gov has always had as the exchange management function is to validate that a file load fits parameters and little else. There is not a lot of direct, embedded decision support in the platform. Decision support should change decision patterns so that would produce significant winners and losers and therefore significant opposition.

Buying insurance without good support is hard. Healthcare.gov does not make it easier.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: «On the Road and In Your Backyard 27 On the Road and In Your Backyard
Next Post: Florida Recount: Ballots Are the New Caravan »

Reader Interactions

9Comments

  1. 1.

    JR

    November 12, 2018 at 8:41 am

    What if they displayed the plans in columns with tabulated benefits and expenses? That layout really is quite bad, I agree.

  2. 2.

    Sab

    November 12, 2018 at 8:49 am

    What is a “dominated” plan?

  3. 3.

    David Anderson

    November 12, 2018 at 9:21 am

    @Sab:

    ” A dominated plan is tied or beaten on all relevant criteria. ”

    So in this case, same network, same insurer, same plan type (so all ties)

    And then much higher deductible and out of pocket cost sharing.

  4. 4.

    jonas

    November 12, 2018 at 10:20 am

    There’s a lot of stuff like this that could be vastly improved. Unfortunately HHS is now filled with people dedicated to sabotaging it in every way possible. Maybe some better House oversight can help, but I doubt it on stuff like this. The fumigation job the next Dem president will have to do on the entire executive branch to get rid of the Trump stank will be enormous.

  5. 5.

    David Anderson

    November 12, 2018 at 10:38 am

    @jonas: Dominated plan choices are not a Trump administration problem. It is a HC.Gov business/service model problem. HC.Gov accepts anything approved by the states and provides very little decision support. It gives a sort and filter option but that is buyer driven instead of a shaped experience which is then buyer modified.

  6. 6.

    marduk

    November 12, 2018 at 10:39 am

    Are there any good resources out there to help me pick an optimal plan? We buy on the SHOP exchange in NY so the only subsides are an employer match.

  7. 7.

    Butch

    November 12, 2018 at 11:22 am

    So one good thing from my layoff last June is that we’re now eligible for a subsidy – but does your column here mean that I should be looking beyond the most expensive Bronze, which is what I had initially settled on? It’s $391 a month with the subsidy ($7,000 deductible, coverage for prescriptions and good coverage for doctors visits); I hadn’t even looked at Silver or Gold because I assumed I’d be priced out of them.

  8. 8.

    David Anderson

    November 12, 2018 at 2:20 pm

    @Butch: look around

  9. 9.

    Sergio Lopez-Luna

    November 13, 2018 at 11:45 am

    My son used a broker and it made the process go very smooth and he saved about $200/month and got reimbursed for the previous year over payment. I can’t recommend enough!

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - beckya57 - Copper Canyon, Mexico, April 2025
Image by beckya57 (7/31/25)

World Central Kitchen

Donate

Recent Comments

  • Bruce K in ATH-GR on Wednesday Night Open Thread (Jul 10, 2025 @ 4:10am)
  • Sister Inspired Revolver of Freedom on War for Ukraine Day 1,231: Wednesday is a Repeat of Tuesday and Thursday Will Likely Be a Repeat of Wednesday (Jul 10, 2025 @ 3:25am)
  • Harrison Wesley on Wednesday Night Open Thread (Jul 10, 2025 @ 3:00am)
  • bjacques on War for Ukraine Day 1,231: Wednesday is a Repeat of Tuesday and Thursday Will Likely Be a Repeat of Wednesday (Jul 10, 2025 @ 2:01am)
  • Msb on The Texas Flood Tragedies Continue (Jul 10, 2025 @ 2:00am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
No Kings Protests June 14 2025

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

Feeling Defeated?  If We Give Up, It's Game Over

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!