Health Insurance: Now Sold in Stores

The next big thing in health insurance may be on busy Roosevelt Avenue in the Flushing section of Queens, N.Y. There, in a shop tucked between a drugstore and a mobile phone center, UnitedHealth Group is learning to sell health insurance to the masses the way other companies sell shoes or office supplies. The staff offers help in the eight languages and Chinese dialects spoken in the neighborhood. Customers can buy a medical plan, check their blood pressure, and plop the kids in front of the office’s Xbox game console while getting advice on doctors, healthy cooking, or drug interactions. IPad stations offer self-guided tours of benefit plans, and there’s even a wellness room where an audiologist fits hearing aids.

The experiment by UnitedHealth—the biggest U.S. medical insurer, with estimated 2012 sales of $110 billion—is designed to help it compete under the new Affordable Care Act. By 2014 as many as 85 million consumers, representing $600 billion in purchasing power, may be shopping for their own health care on government and private exchanges, according to consulting firm Oliver Wyman. To get ready, insurers are trying to bolster their brands and reputations for customer service. WellPoint last year announced a $50 million branding campaign; others have boosted advertising as well. “Customers want to bring the conversation to where they are,” says Christopher Law, a UnitedHealth vice president who oversees the insurer’s retail site. “Why can’t it be more like a bank, where you can go in and have tellers helping you out?”