People don't 'like' insurance

TL;DR

People don’t ‘like’ health insurance. This key insight guided me through the process of designing a solution that centered on consumer needs and decision support, making the Saved Plans page’s Enroll CTA the highest performing enrollment CTA (38%) on Healthcare.gov.

Healthcare.gov’s legacy plan card with the “Like this plan” button

Problem

“Plan Likes” was a legacy feature intended to help consumers recall a chosen plan while guiding them to the next step of their journey. I was the UX lead on a cross-functional that was asked how we might improve this experience to support consumers successfully choosing a plan that met their needs.

The feature had failed to align with consumers’ expectations. Liking a plan didn’t fit their working model of adding the plan to a shortlist. Instead, the “Like this plan” action took them out of the shopping flow to a page of instructions and an important link to the next step; often-overlooked critical information for new users.

Page visited when clicking the “Like this plan” button

And if someone wished to “like” more than one plan for later? Now you’re just being cruel.

Key insight

People don’t like insurance; it’s a product no one hopes they ever need. Instead, we shop reluctantly and with low emotional engagement. I needed to handoff a solution that transformed “Plan Likes” into an experience that honored this reality.

Solution

I replaced “Like this plan” with a plain-language “Save” toggle and a new Saved Plans page that:

• Clearly indicated when a plan was saved
• Provided immediate feedback
• Presented a simplifed view for continuing to narrow the decision field
• Added an info alert throughout the pre-application journey guiding new users toward their next step

The redesigned “Save” toggle interaction

The Saved Plans page

Impact

The Enroll call-to-action on the Saved Plans page had the highest engagement rate of all pages including this CTA.

Summary

The response from consumers exceeded everyone’s expectations with engagement during the initial Open Enrollment period validating the project’s value as a decision support tool.

Thanks to the efforts of everyone on the team, Saved Plans was available across the Healthcare.gov experience at launch. The elegance of the solution was truly leveled up by the plan card redesign of my cohort The Real Mike Henderson. And, the story wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the joy Nicole felt seeing that Healthcare.gov finally had a heart.