Plan Recommendations in the Medicare Market: A Survey of Medicare Intermediaries

This project surveys licensed Medicare insurance intermediaries (agents/brokers) to better study how intermediaries interact with potential clients and form recommendations. The survey contains an embedded randomized experiment to better understand how intermediaries respond to various client cues and profiles. The survey also elicits agents' beliefs about how much value consumers place on the specific Medicare plan features that distinguish Medicare Advantage and Original Medicare plus Medigap. Finally, we ask about common practices in the Medicare market. The results inform a broader study of how intermediaries shape Medicare plan choice.

2026-06-09

2026-10-15

The primary outcomes are Medicare plan recommendations for different hypothetical client profiles and broker beliefs about how much different consumers would be willing to pay for different Medicare plans and plan attributes.

The Medicare plan recommendation is measured as whether the intermediary recommends Medicare Advantage or Original Medicare plus Medicare Supplement (Medigap). We also measure the intermediary's belief about how much different Medicare beneficiaries would be willing to pay (in $ monthly premium) to have Original Medicare plus Medigap instead of a $0-premium Medicare Advantage plan. This allows us to put the value of the plan recommendation in monetary terms.

Secondary outcomes include the intermediary's assessment of how well each Medicare plan fits the consumer profile and confidence in their recommendation.

We ask each intermediary to evaluate Medicare plan fit on a 0-100 scale, to explain their recommendation, and to report how confident they are in their recommendation on a 0-100 scale.

Licensed Medicare insurance intermediaries (agents and brokers) are recruited through a B2B commercial respondent panel. We may also recruit participants from other online survey platforms or distribute the survey through online forums commonly used by Medicare intermediaries. After screening and consent, respondents answer background questions about their business practices and evaluate a series of hypothetical client profiles. We also elicit beliefs about consumers' valuations of different Medicare plan features.

Not available

Randomization is implemented by a computer and is built into the online survey platform.

Randomization is at the individual level.

No

N/A - randomization at the individual respondent level and there is no clustering.

300-500 individual responses.

300-500 individual responses.