UnitedHealthcare launches retail stores for health insurance

While our work at uhcenrollment.com is entirely devoted to delivering UnitedHealthcare products and service though online platforms, the company has expanded into a seemingly opposite delivery path by opening a series of retail stores. Both strategies make sense in the current market for health insurance. UnitedHealthcare CEO Gail Boudreaux was quoted on this topic “Health care is a local resource, and as consumers are increasingly being asked to play a greater role in their personal health, many people are not quite ready and may need extra support”.

UnitedHealthcare opened its most recent retail store in Flushing, Queens, New York. The company also has a store for Medicaid members in Hempstead, N.Y.; a store for Chinese-American Medicare beneficiaries in Alhambra, California and Kingston, Tennessee to help eligible individuals select Medicare health care benefits. The newest store is the first that emphasizes health insurance for non-Medicare members. The store is especially geared toward the city’s Asian-American community. The design of the retail store is meant to appeal to younger customers, complete with personal computers that monitor blood pressure and iPads applications that manage health care information. The store staff is trained to provide enrollment assistance in 15 of New York's public assistance plans including Medicaid, food stamps, heating and utility assistance.

While the store is welcomed by the Asian community, it is not clear whether other New Yorkers or government officials want a commercial businesses boosting enrollment in taxpayer-paid assistance plans. A successful retail store staff could balloon the government's costs for these programs during a period when New York is focused on cutting spending in all programs. UnitedHealthcare's national vice president of UnitedHealthcare’s Asian Initiatives Christopher Law defends the action: “For nearly two decades we have been striving toward that goal by helping residents in New York and New Jersey’s Asian-American communities live healthier lives. The opening of the new UnitedHealthcare Asian Plaza is the next step in not only improving the health of our plan participants, but the health of our communities”.

The federal government has also taken a two-pronged approach to health insurance enrollments in the health insurance exchange by authorizing the use of individuals and companies as navigators to provide personal assistance with health insurance enrollment. We presume that some navigators will operate in a face-to-face retail store setting while others like our affiliate Freedom Benefits "OnlineNavigator" will provide assistance through electronic media and online technologies. Currently enrollment assistance in non-English languages is primarily provided through face-to-face advisers.

It seems clear that some consumers prefer the convenience of online transactions while others prefer shopping in a bricks and mortar retail store. We expect that expansion of both types of services will be needed if we expect to enroll tens of millions of uninsured Americans in new health insurance plans by 2014 as envisioned under the Affordable Care Act of 2010.