Yes, men are gullible, but why won’t they ask for directions? p3
We are close to finishing up our discussion of the survey conducted by Insurance.com . The researchers wanted to gauge how many Americans fell for some long-held beliefs about insurance coverage. Men, it turns out, were more susceptible to misinformation than women. Overall, though, the results showed that we are all becoming savvier consumers of insurance.
That’s good news, of course, especially considering that open enrollment for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is just around the corner. There is still a percentage of the population, though, that believes some common myths about the ACA, including the following:
Under the ACA, health insurers can base their rates on an enrollee’s history of high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer. More than one-third of all respondents — 58 percent of whom were men — said this was true. As we said in our Oct. 23 post, the correct answer to all of these myths is “false.” In this case, it’s surprising to see that so many people still believe that pre-existing conditions have a bearing on the policyholder’s rates.
The ACA specifically prohibits health insurance companies from using pre-existing conditions when setting rates. Insurers are also prohibited from carving pre-existing conditions out of a policyholder’s coverage. If you have had cancer, the insurer cannot cover everything but cancer.
If an employer offers a health insurance plan, the ACA requires employees to go with that plan. Fortunately, only 19 percent of respondents believed this myth; however, most of the believers (59 percent) were men. It is true that, under the ACA, nearly every American must purchase health insurance. However, neither the ACA nor the federal government cares whether the policy was offered through an employer.
There is one last category of insurance to go through, and we’ll talk about that in our next post.
Source: Insurance Journal, “10 Insurance Myths (Men Are More Likely Than Women to Believe 8 of Them),” Oct. 21, 2014
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