Consumer Preferences for Health Services Offered by Health Insurance Companies in Germany

Abstract German health insurance companies increasingly strive to position themselves as health partners to their customers to improve customers’ health and contain costs. However, there is uncertainty about customers’ preferences for health services offered by health insurance companies. Therefore, this paper studies consumer preferences for health services that are or could be provided by health insurance companies in Germany. An online survey was conducted using two stated preference techniques to collect and analyze the data (namely, rating and ranking of health services considered by insurance companies). A sample of 880 German health insurance customers between 18 and 65 years old filled out the online questionnaire, of which 860 submitted complete responses. Ordinal logistic regression analysis was used for the rating and ranking. Preliminary examinations, care management, and health programs were the three health services most important to the respondents. The results suggest that people want their health insurance to support them with preventive health services that offer direct therapeutic value and not just informational, economic, access-related, or convenience-related benefits. These preferences for health services are homogeneous for most subgroups of the population, implying that health insurance companies could consider an overall strategy to address these preferences for all clients by focusing on the important health services. Key messages • People value health services provided by health insurers that offer direct therapeutic value over those that offer only informational, economic, access or convenience benefits. • As preferences are homogeneous across the population, insurers could consider an overall strategy by focusing on the important health services.