Cigna University Offers an Easy-A Courseload... For Cost-Shifting to Consumers
Health-insurance companies like Cigna are busy ramping up warm-and-fuzzy PR efforts to deflect the loathing of their members, but their intentions go well beyond spiffing up their corporate images. In the case of Cigna's "Cigna University" -- part of a multimillion-dollar ad campaign expected to run for several years -- the goal is simple, if not exactly subtle: Convince people that they're actually better off when they pick up a bigger portion of their healthcare bill.
To that end, Cigna has unveiled a soft-music and pastel-hued Web site -- click the image at left for a larger version -- built around its new slogan, "It's time to feel better." (Feel better about what, exactly, isn't immediately clear. Probably not your healthcare costs.) Although the site doesn't wear its agenda on its sleeve, it's not exactly hidden, either: One of the first resources touted on a page labeled "It's time for real change in the marketplace" is a 2007 Cigna white paper titled, "Is Consumerism the Health Care Silver Bullet?" (PDF link).
I've got a longer review of the Cigna site after the jump, but here's the capsule version: To the extent that its descriptions of consumer-directed healthcare are honest, they're all but incomprehensible, and to the extent the site offers understandable information on healthcare, it frequently borders on outright dishonesty. Although it does offer some unintentional hilarity along the way, including the animated adventures of "Harry the Health Claim." Check it out on the next page.
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Cigna's devotion to so-called "consumer-directed health plans" shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Such plans, which typically couple high deductibles with tax-exempt health-savings accounts, are increasingly popular with employers because they offer lower annual premiums while shifting the actual cost of medical care to workers. Insurers have also embraced them out of necessity, partly because their repeated premium hikes are pricing many employers out of the market for traditional plans.
About the only folks who don't like them, in fact, are consumers themselves, who resent being told that it's their fault medical costs are so high (because they aren't paying enough attention to what their own care costs), find themselves generally ill-prepared to shop for treatment the way they'd look for a new car, and dislike the greater financial risks and complexity such plans impose.
All of which helps explain why Cigna has dressed up its new push for the consumer-directed plans in its misleading new campaign. Its site features a set of three "courses" offered by "Cigna University" that purport to explain the history of health insurance and how it works, different varieties of health plans, and political and economic issues in healthcare.
Unsurprisingly, just about every one of these options ends up touting the advantages of high-deductible plans, which according to Cigna can save people money even while forcing them to shoulder higher costs should they get sick. For instance, young professional "Stan" tells us that he chose a high-deductible plan because it "gives me more control. It's my money, so I think seriously before spending it." Of course, he might be a little short of such time if he's ever lying unconscious in an emergency room, which is just one of the many fallacies of consumer-directed healthcare. (The bigger one, of course, is that the plans save people money -- sort of -- only if they never get hurt or sick, and that they can get hit with large out-of-pocket costs if they do.)
At least there's some comic relief along the way, such as a tour through "Health Plan Park," where pop-up graphics and "people" like Stan tout the virtues of high-deductible plans. Better yet is "The Life of a Claim," in which an animated Harold the Health Care Claim -- looking like nothing so much as that sad-eyed bill haunting Capitol Hill -- bounces from doctor's office to insurer and back to the individual, meanwhile reminding everyone just why we love our health-insurance companies so much (emphasis added):
From your doctor's office, my path is guided by the list of services you were provided. Off to the insurer who services your benefit plan! I hope your plan covers the services listed on me. If so, the insurer pays part or all of the fee; if not, the cost may be your responsibility. Your claim may be denied if it's not covered in your plan. Or it may be denied if there's no medical need at hand. But if you believe your claim makes the grade, you can appeal for a new decision to be made. If your service is covered, then I'm sure to be paid!You gotta love Harold's ability to go out on a high note.
By the way, it's worth noting several of the statements Cigna and its advertising partners gave to the NYT last week in unveiling the campaign. Harold himself couldn't have said some of this stuff any better:
[Cigna official Sheila] McCormick acknowledges the widespread skepticism -- even cynicism -- about efforts to improve health care in the United States as well as the health insurance system.At least Cigna's push for consumer-directed plans is somewhat more restrained than Humana's phony grassroots organization ChangeNow4Health, which advances a similar agenda. Although that's really not saying a whole lot, now that I think about it."The [health-insurance] industry is not perceived as positively by consumers as we would like," Ms. McCormick says, and as a result "it's very difficult to engage people."
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Howard Sherman, president of Doremus in New York, says a goal is to "stake out a leadership position" for Cigna, which is beginning to "think of itself as less of a health insurer and more of a health service company."
"It's more about that service mentality," he says of Cigna University, assisting "members and employers to more easily navigate what's a pretty complex system and get the benefits they need when they need them."