1. Why fragmented messaging leads to consumer confusion and eroded trust. 
    

2. What payer/provider co-marketing is and its potential to boost brand credibility, visibility, and growth. 
    

3. How to launch compliant co-marketing campaigns effectively while increasing enrollment and brand awareness. 

The post Bridging the Gap: How Co-marketing Strengthens Relationships and Builds Trust  appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

• The true payvider advantage isn’t integration. It’s consumer confidence.

• Payviders can increase confidence with one promise and one accountability system between their insurance and care-delivery businesses.

• Payviders who focus just as much on the human, emotional side of healthcare as the clinical side will win out.

Payviders, as Zachary Goldberg and David Nash explained, are “uniquely situated to reestablish the patient as the central focus of the healthcare system.” Vertical integration, interoperable data, accessibility, and scale will put consumers and their health outcomes first.

But the real payvider opportunity isn’t only structural change—it’s also human change. Inspiring consumer trust and confidence may prove to be more challenging than coordinating electronic medical records or streamlining workflows. Here’s why.

Seniors don’t see integration or interoperability—they see their experiences

A recent report shows that 82% of adults aged 65 or older feel the healthcare system isn’t prepared for the changing needs of the aging population. Most find the healthcare system difficult and stressful to navigate. In short, they are deeply dissatisfied.

According to PwC, the top consumer pain point in healthcare is fragmentation. Creating a unified, secure digital ecosystem is now table stakes for payviders. But it’s not enough just to connect dots behind the scenes.

Payviders need to also connect dots where it matters most—with seniors. The most important connections are face to face and on the phone, but it’s critical to keep the relationship going in their mailbox, email, text messages, and social feeds. Showing up consistently with human messaging can earn consumer confidence.

Every interaction a senior has with a payvider—choosing a plan, visiting the doctor, receiving treatments, submitting claims, letters, phone calls, social posts—has the potential to erode or reinforce that confidence.

Bottom line: If seniors don’t feel treated as individuals with their personal health and lifestyle goals central to their care, they won’t be satisfied with their coverage or care. They’ve got to see before they’ll believe.

The payvider/consumer marketing disconnect is real

Too often, payviders fall back on insider speak when marketing themselves. They talk about seamless integration, value-based care, trusted in-network providers, or personalized outreach. Here’s the trouble with this kind of marketing:

• Seamless integration: while this sounds positive, it’s abstract. Seniors want to see tangible proof of care coordination in action.

• Value-based care: Consumers don’t like the term because they associate it with cheapness and low quality. They prefer terms like quality-focused care or patient-first care.

• Trusted in-network providers: Trust in insurers has reached a breaking point with allegations of fraud and abuse on the rise. In this climate, consumers are more likely to trust friends and family and review sites for provider recommendations.

• Personalized outreach: Again, this sounds good, but personalization from a payvider point of view may not be what seniors truly want. Too often, personalization is tied to plan type and benefit reminders on the insurer side and vaccine or wellness reminders on the provider side.
  
  While all of this is helpful, it may not be the most valuable to someone whose goal is to lift their grandchild and swing them around. To that person, guidance on balance, strength, and stamina—functional health rather than clinical health—is true personalization.

These phrases help explain the model and how it works, but what do they do to mitigate consumer mistrust and overcome doubt? Payviders need a new messaging framework that helps seniors feel confident. It should explain how the payvider:

• Makes consumers feel protected rather than processed.

• Creates continuity before, during, and after care.

• Holds itself and its different divisions accountable.

• Sends a cohesive, easy-to-understand message.

How payviders can increase senior confidence

Start with one—one promise and one accountability system

A payvider’s one promise needs to explain how a payer/provider partnership benefits seniors. Answer why they should care about a unified healthcare experience. Show them how they’ll be taken care of and put first, how their health and quality of life can improve, and how they’ll be a partner rather than a passive patient in their health. Create a single narrative between their coverage and their care.

The traditional fee-for-service model pits payers and providers against each other in a negotiation on price and quality. That bargaining isn’t necessary for payviders, but it raises the stakes for accountability.

Seniors want lower costs and healthcare that’s easy to navigate. Payviders must show how they’re doing both by streamlining the prior authorizations and claims processes, increasing coordination and access, and improving seniors’ health. Rather than being accountable to each other as payer and provider, payviders must be accountable to consumers. To do that, they need to have visible, consistent alignment between coverage and care over the long term.

Design a system around trust and belief

Payviders can’t promise simplicity while their service experience delivers friction. Marketing alone can’t bridge the gap between what senior consumers expect and what healthcare delivers. Since COVID, trust in the healthcare system has been strained while consumer expectations have risen.

While advances in technology and pharmaceuticals will radically change the future of healthcare, one thing will always remain central—compassionate care. Too often the industry focuses too much on health and not enough on care despite the fact that health is deeply emotional. Designing the system around coordinated storytelling and messaging that advocates for consumers will be what sets apart average payviders from extraordinary ones, the ones who earn and retain seniors’ trust and belief.

Clearly, we have a lot of thoughts about senior care. Big ones. See what else is bouncing around in our heads.

The post The Real Payvider Advantage Isn’t Integration or Data—It’s Confidence appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

• To improve margins, carriers need to educate, engage, and empower Episodically Engaged members who overindex for emergency care use.

• Carriers need to take a three-pronged approach by empowering agents, collaborating with providers, and enhancing their member outreach.

• Heinrich has the strategic and executional experience to help in one, two, or all three areas.

As Medicare carriers shift from membership growth to margin discipline, care utilization rates and costs continue to rise. In 2023 (the most recent data available), 110 contracts (17%) operated at a loss while 211 contracts (33%) operated on razor-thin margins per Medicare Market Insights. Carriers continue to shepherd beneficiaries into Special Needs Plans to minimize risk. But that’s not enough.

Too many high-cost members in general market plans don’t engage in preventive, coordinated care. It’s not just an issue of access leading to avoidable, reactive care—it’s also a lack of consumer confidence. These members don’t have the right guidance to navigate an overwhelming system. They don’t have the advocates they need.

Carriers have the power to create positive change by joining forces with agents and providers. When the healthcare system—carriers, agents, and providers— comes together to deliver a coordinated experience, consumers have the support system they need to improve their health outcomes and quality of life. That has the potential to lower costs and improve population health at scale.

The Medicare carrier hand-off problem

The past two Annual Election Periods (AEPs) have seen major disruption as carriers expand and contract their footprints from one year to the next. It’s been hard on beneficiaries and agents alike.

The carriers who “won” AEP 2025 by membership numbers pulled back in 2026 to improve margins and shed unprofitable markets (i.e., high-cost beneficiaries). The ones who “lost” 2025 expanded aggressively in 2026 likely picking up the higher utilizing, more reactive members other carriers let go.

Basically, carriers pass this set of beneficiaries between them from year to year. I have no doubt this trend will continue if carriers don’t address the root cause of the issue.

Deft Research calls them the “Episodically Engaged”

Deft Research is known for illuminating Medicare Advantage data. Their latest segmentation study breaks the Medicare population into six segments.

The ones Deft calls the Episodically Engaged tend to manage five conditions, on average. They are less likely to get annual wellness visits, have yearly physicals, or see their primary care provider (PCP) regularly. That means they use more emergency care, leading to higher costs, more in-patient admissions, and more surgeries. This is why this segment erodes margins and why so many carriers let them go.

Episodically Engaged beneficiaries also switch plans at higher rates than average (36% compared to 29%). Some of this is forced due to plan exits or benefit degradations, but some of it is likely due to a lack of member communication, support, and engagement.

What Episodically Engaged members need from their carriers

Episodically Engaged members likely feel overwhelmed by the healthcare system and making changes to their lifestyles. They may not know what to do or even where to start. They may see healthcare as reactive, using it mostly for acute needs rather than prevention.

That’s why carriers need to make accessing preventive care a top priority for this segment. Above all else, it’s got to be easy for the Episodically Engaged. Here’s how to do it.

Empower brokers to consult with confidence 

The trend of the role of an agent/broker moving away from pure selling to trusted health resource has accelerated. Carriers like Humana have long encouraged agents to focus on improving the member experience with concierge-level service. SCAN Health took it a step further, creating a formal Brokers as Health Navigators program.

Carriers can streamline the agent learning curve and speed up their effectiveness by giving agents the right tools and materials. Here are some examples:

• Give them scripts to help beneficiaries find a primary care provider (PCP) and schedule their first appointment.

• Make onboarding simple and turnkey with a self-serve portal checklist that explains:

• How to know what’s covered by their plan and what benefits they have.

• How to find in-network care to lower costs.

• How to comparison shop for covered prescriptions at in-network pharmacies.

• When to use telehealth, home-based care, or urgent care instead of going to the emergency room.

• Send every member a magnet with their agent of record’s contact information and a reminder to call them first for any Medicare plan needs.

Exceptional agent education and sales enablement is one of Heinrich’s core competencies. We take an agent-centric approach to lead carriers in solving their toughest problems—like tackling high costs and utilization rates with a key member segment.

Collaborate with PCPs to drive care consistency  

Alert PCPs to pay special attention to patients who overuse emergency care in lieu of primary care. Encourage them to explain why prevention matters to these patients.

You can join forces by co-marketing annual wellness visits, screenings, and vaccinations. Encourage PCPs to send these beneficiaries personalized schedules and reminders. See how a co-marketing plan comes to life here.

A simple yet effective tactic could be sending a co-branded exam prep postcard at the first of the year. It can have quick tips on gathering the beneficiary’s medical history, medications, and any health concerns. Add a QR code to make booking the appointment quick and easy.

Rethink your member messaging to boost confidence

As more member communication moves to email and social, carriers need to keep other channels like SMS and direct mail top of mind to increase member confidence. Here’s why.

According to Pew Research, 95% of Americans aged 65 or older have a cell phone and 78% have a smartphone. Carriers can use SMS to encourage member plan and PCP engagement for member portal activation and annual wellness visits. Simple prompts like “tap to call your doctor’s office,” “reply 1 to schedule your check-up,” or “tap to call us for help” make immediate action a no-brainer.

Direct mail can be a useful tool to get members to take essential actions like confirming their PCP and scheduling appointments, especially with QR codes or smart-assistant instructions like, “Siri, call Dr. Regina Brown in Denver to schedule my annual wellness exam.”

This kind of outreach proves to members that you have their best interest at heart and that you’re there for them. This increases their confidence in you, which then increases their confidence in the system at large.

Heinrich can help you improve your margins by engaging your membership

The future of Medicare Advantage isn’t margins over membership—it’s margins plus member engagement. Heinrich can help you enhance your member engagement strategy from one, two, or three angles: agents, providers, and/or member communications. Send me an email to schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation today.

The post Drive Medicare Carrier Margins by Delivering Confidence and Care Consistency   appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

The need

If you’ve ever been to downtown Tempe, Arizona, you know it has a lot going on—and it’s still growing. For example, the new 355-acre innovation corridor known as Novus Place is slated to add 275,000 square feet of retail and 4,100 residences, including two 300+ unit apartment complexes by our partners at Transwestern. As their first complex reached completion, Transwestern decided they wanted the second to be different. To stand out and fully reflect the benefits and atmosphere of Novus Place. Enter Heinrich. With a past Transwestern property, The Riv, already on our branding roster, we were thrilled by the opportunity to work with them a second time to create a brand that would give this unique Tempe complex an equally unique (and memorable) brand, not just another name on the side of a building.  

What we did

One of our specialties at Heinrich is developing a brand from the ground up, before the building’s broken ground—brands rooted in insight, relevance, and a deep understanding of place. To accomplish this for Transwestern’s newest project, we started with an eight-hour, on-the-ground immersion in Tempe, where we uncovered what makes the city and its audience unique. Then, back in Denver, we used those learnings to craft a strategy centered on creating a sense of comfort and belonging. Developed a name that subtly asked audiences to pay attention, while being both meaningful and memorable. And of course, created a full verbal and visual identity, brand guidelines, collateral, and a website, all of which brought its personality to life. The result: Mira—a brand that feels as natural to Tempe as the sun, while offering its audience a calm, welcoming desert haven all their own.  

The Results

We always say that the best validation for a job well done is repeat business. With Mira as our second collaboration with Transwestern, this is no exception. 

We also always say that we don’t care about awards. But winning a Fifty award for our work on Mira was also a nice surprise.  

WHY THE CLIENT SMILED

Mira was our second project with Heinrich, and we were once again thrilled with how the strategy, name, and brand identity came together perfectly. We can’t wait for the next project.”

Development and Marketing Associate, Transwestern

The post Mira: Commercial Real Estate Branding  appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

The need

Step inside the Mile High Flea Market, and you’ll feel the buzz. It’s a legend, a business, and a party all at once. This open-air market has been a place for Denver to buy and sell anything under the sun for over 40 years. Got fresh produce, tools, live music, great food or a six-inch dancing wombatroid to sell? This is the place. A few years ago, Heinrich surpassed all expectations to dramatically increase buyers, repeat buyers, and sellers through video and digital marketing excellence, and a few years later, the Flea came back to us for more. Heinrich presented three concepts expecting them to choose just one, but the Mile High Flea Market loved our ideas so much that they found the money and gave us the green light to produce two. 

What we did

The campaign delivered two video concepts, with the first being “The Song of the Sale” where we revisited one of the Flea’s old radio songs, re-invented it, and re-recorded it. Because what better way to get people excited about the Flea than to serenade them? We had a band play the song live on the main stage and encouraged the audience to sing along to show that the flea is more than a place to buy and sell, it’s a community gathering you don’t want to miss. And the second concept shared this sentiment, we called it “Colorado’s Largest Garage Sale.” After interviewing real people having a garage sale, we gave them a free spot at the Flea to try out the fun while filming everything to capture all the excitement. With both concepts for this campaign, we reminded audiences that the Mile High Flea Market is for all, and, even better, everyone can have a good time, whether you’re buying, selling, or just singing along while eating a turkey leg. 

The Results

The Mile High Flea Market continues to do well and is a staple for the Denver community. In years past, the Flea was struggling to maintain customers and find new ones.

But our video campaigns over the past few years, combined with digital marketing efforts, have kept the Flea strong and continuing to jump to new heights.  

The post Mile High Flea Market appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

• Dental insurers and providers can embrace technology to shift towards innovation.
• Direct marketing to both consumers and to brokers can elevate dental care from a nice to have to a need to have. 
• New plan design and benefits demand new communications approaches.

When you think about innovation, chances are you think about A.I. or Silicon Valley not the dentist’s office. Yet innovation is just as much about re-seeing the old as it is the new. And dentistry is rife for disruption.

Encourage innovation and technology adoption

Dental insurers can encourage providers to be more innovative as a whole. To start, insurers could cover teledentistry services and encourage providers to adopt these services if they haven’t already. Dental providers and payers can’t afford to ignore this healthcare trend that will likely expand into new specialities.

This can also give providers an opportuntity to rethink their service delivery methods. Robots could provide routine cleanings. Smart toothbrushes could provide 3-D scans. Insurers could shift away from a typical fee-for-service model to one that rewards innovation, much like medical insurance has done with value-based care.

Advocate for marketing

Dental insurers remain at the center of three key stakeholders: providers, brokers and members. As such, they have an incredible opportunity to not only leverage marketing but make it work for everyone. Insurers can be strategic with their marketing budgets with an eye on conversions, sales and returns in addition to long-term sustainability.

Insurers could heavily promote innovations like teledentistry to brokers and members through an integrated marketing campaign of email, paid media and direct mail. Such a campaign could promote the ease and convenience of teledentistry while raising awareness of it.

Additionally, insurers could be encouraging good oral health habits through newsletters and social media. Insurers can encourage those with dental emergencies to seek dental providers rather than treatment in emergency rooms or urgent care, which may be more costly, through a friendly text message or push notification.

Brokers need help communicating the value of plans and oral health with easy-to-use materials created for a digital world. Insurers can help brokers understand and overcome consumer objections and barriers with conversation guides and sales materials created for a digital-first world.

Oral health can become synonymous with whole-person health. Consumers need to see dental health—and by extension dental insurance—as an essential not a luxury, especially during periods of perceived or actual economic uncertainty.

Communicating plan innovation

According to Deloitte, “In the future of health, health insurance companies likely will not exist as they do now.” Wellness organizations focused on social services, care coordination and smart device distribution and education will take the place of insurers. Visionary insurers understand the need to not just react to market changes but also anticipate them through innovative plan offerings and benefits.

Additionally, they understand the importance of communicating these innovations to brokers, members and prospects to maximize usage and adoption.

• If an insurer provides free dental coverage to children, for example, they could develop an integrated campaign targeting young families. 
• They could provide a free smart toothbrush to those over 65, who may struggle more with proper dental care due to medication side effects or mobility issues, with every plan. They could marry paid digital media with a content plan aimed at lead generation. 

Whatever the innovation, communicating its benefits remain paramount.

Ready to see our work in action? Check out our Smile Stronger B2B sales enablement campaign.

The post How To Champion Dental Innovation appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

Don’t get me wrong, I 100% believe in achieving business objectives—I just think there’s a way to do it that’s less “rah-rah us” and more “what’s in it for you.” Said another way, great B2B sales enablement content is about finding the overlap between your business goals and your audience’s needs.

To do that, you need to stop thinking about them as a sales channel and start thinking about them as consumers. This is especially true when working with an independent sales force that can choose to sell other carriers.

Why you need to think about B2B sales enablement from a B2C perspective

As the tension between Medicare carriers and independent sales agents grows over commissions and plan availability, it’s more important than ever for carriers to develop deep, lasting relationships with agents. That means creating—and maintaining—personal relationships.

I always hear people say, “It’s just business; don’t take it personally.” Sorry, but no. Business, as any good salesperson knows, is inherently and incredibly personal. There’s even a book on it.

That’s why so many business meetings take place on the golf course, over breakfast, or during happy hours. When you know and trust someone, it’s easier to do business with them. You’re more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong.

Despite AI’s creep, businesses are still made of people. It’s not possible to check your personal life at the door.

That’s why we need to abandon the idea of staid (i.e., boring business-y) B2B sales enablement. In the fog of information overload and ho-hum content, you must break through. The best way to do that is by treating your sales agents and brokers as customers first and as salespeople second.

What a B2C approach to B2B sales enablement looks like

B2B sales enablement content isn’t about selling your plans, products, and benefits. It’s about empowering brokers to generate more leads, close more sales, and retain more business.

To do that, you need to understand their sales journey, their pain points, and their aspirations just as you would with Medicare beneficiaries. You need to empathize with sales agents to empower them.

Once you understand their workflows and hurdles, you can create the right sales enablement tools and resources that help them work smarter, faster, and more compliantly. By addressing agents’ needs first, you’ll achieve your business goals as a natural outcome.

Let’s make it more concrete with a real-world example.

• Situation: Launch a new sales enablement content platform

• Objective: Drive adoption and engagement of new platform

• Goal: 50% independent broker adoption by year end

• Agent needs: Get essential Annual Election Period (AEP) to-dos done like Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) outreach

• Content solution: Create an easy-to-follow sales play on the new platform with step-by-step instructions for strategic ANOC outreach

• Outcomes: More agents complete ANOC outreach, which drives retention, and platform adoption exceeds 50%

Make tentpole moments and flagship content your go-to sales enablement solutions

Since Medicare is notoriously complex, it’s no wonder selling it is too, especially for carriers with multiple products, benefits, and lines of business. Too often I see the tendency to kitchen-sink sales enablement plans by including everything everywhere all the time. The thing is, even the best brokers can’t juggle all that at one time.

It’s better to focus on higher quality content rather than mass quantity. A great way to stay disciplined is by creating tentpole moments—those go-big tactics that give you a lot to talk about before, during, and after they occur. B2C marketing is no stranger to tentpole moments, but Medicare B2B sales enablement content tends to be about the three Ps: product, product, product.

Heinrich created a B2B tentpole moment with Ascend, a virtual sales enablement conference to level up agents’ lead pipelines. We empowered agents to generate their own leads and explained why agent-earned leads make for stickier sales. Over the course of two days, agents learned from top-performing agents about social media, grassroots marketing, and referrals. One agent said it was the best field support they’d ever seen from a carrier.

Sure, it’s great that agents liked it. But what matters more is what it did for agents and the carrier. Ascend attendees had a 120% increase in sales compared to non-attendees. That’s a huge win for agents and the carrier.

Another B2B tentpole moment was the creation of an agent value proposition campaign, Improving Lives during AEP 2025, a particularly fraught time for the Medicare industry. We tapped into agent’s deepest reasons for selling Medicare—helping others—and expressed gratitude for the hard work agents do with Agent Appreciation Week with an inspirational video, optimistic virtual thank-you card, and daily giveaways like Starbucks gift cards. The campaign deepened agent loyalty and helped Humana exceed KPI benchmarks by 500% or more during an AEP filled with industry tumult.

Our sales enablement content strategy takes a similar approach. We create a flagship content piece for every selling season. It anchors agents’ attention to what matters most during that timeframe, whether it’s the Open Enrollment Period (OEP), lock-in period, or AEP.

For example, onboarding and retention dominate Medicare brokers’ workload during OEP. As such, we created an onboarding and retention playbook to sustain clients for the long haul. As we learned more about agents and their needs and the Medicare market evolved, we reimagined the playbook from a static, in-the-weeds PDF to an interactive guide focused on what matters most.

From 2021 to 2025, our onboarding and retention guide has an average viewing time of 13 minutes and 56 seconds—almost 14 times the 1-minute benchmark for web-based content. This level of engagement time proves agents aren’t just flipping through the guide but are actively studying it.

Heinrich is your go-to B2B sales enablement partner

While we were born for business, we live for creativity. That creativity comes to life in our agent content, of course, and also in our B2B sales enablement strategy. Marketing isn’t just about effective communication—it’s about seeing things anew. Get in touch to see what we can do for your B2B sales enablement content.

The post Rethinking Medicare B2B Sales Enablement—From Channel to Customer appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

Sure, prospective patients have more online reviews than ever before, but, with bots and fake accounts on the rise, people still trust their friends and family first.

Health outcomes can be delayed by months or even years, especially when dealing with chronic conditions. It takes time for interventions to work, making it hard for senior consumers to evaluate their effectiveness upfront, let alone stick with them.

The problem is that the U.S. healthcare system isn’t set up for true preventive healthcare, especially for seniors. It’s designed for sick care.

Increasingly, that model appears broken from a financial and operational perspective. Despite business-model turmoil, one thing could be the ultimate tipping point—consumer mistrust.

The state of consumer mistrust in healthcare

Trust in government health agencies has continued to fall since COVID. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report, Trust and Health, 61% of surveyed Americans believe institutions, including business, government, and nonprofits, actively undermine their access to better care.

That same report shows an 18-point decline in trust in the media to report accurate health information. Friends and family have always impacted healthcare decisions. Now influencers have become our go-to healthcare experts over scientists, providers, public health professionals, and healthcare journalists.

Consumer mistrust and dissatisfaction are especially high in senior care

Only 11% of older adults give the overall U.S. health system an A grade. Here are the reasons seniors have lost faith according to a report from by Age Wave and The John A. Hartford Foundation:

• Care-delivery fragmentation

• Navigating a complex system

• High out-of-pocket costs

• Widespread inequities

• Wishing providers spent more time getting to know what truly matters to them

Too many seniors feel ignored, overlooked, dismissed, and treated like conditions rather than people. It’s no wonder they feel betrayed by the very system that proclaims it wants to help them.

Seniors are caught in the middle of payers and providers—not to mention politicians—pointing fingers at each other. Who’s actually standing up for seniors in all this?

What seniors want from their care

At the end of the day, seniors just want the healthcare system, especially their providers, to listen. They want carriers and providers to understand what matters most to them and how to help them achieve it. They don’t care about backend logistics. They just want to be well cared for.

The senior care organizations that practice senior-first care will win in the long run. Some are already working to fix this like value-based and accountable care organizations. Here’s how others can adjust.

• Respect seniors and what they want from their care. As people age, their priorities change. They may be focused on spending more time with loved ones, maintaining their independence, or continuing to do the things they love. It’s more about everyday quality of life and functional health rather than clinical health. Strategic senior care companies will adopt aging-friendly care practices that center on consumer wants and needs.
  

• Communicate their organizational values and how they support senior consumer goals. Too many senior care organizations get stuck on the bottom two rungs of the benefit ladder—talking up product/service features and functional benefits.
  
  They skip over the emotional side (i.e., consumer goals) and what they, as a company, stand for. The senior care companies that express their values and the positive impact they make on seniors’ lives will be the ones to earn more market share.
  

• Show up for and protect senior consumers. Consistent actions speak louder than words, and care delivery extends beyond the exam room.
  
  The senior care groups that do what they say they’ll do time and again will earn the trust of senior consumers. They are the ones who take the extra time to listen to seniors, who sit side by side with them as partners and dig deep to understand seniors’ whys.
  
  The ones who protect senior consumers from complexity and confusion will come out on top. That means doing things like removing barriers to health like food or housing insecurity, streamlining prior authorizations, improving interoperability, and making the claims process simple to follow.

It all boils down to senior confidence

It’s time for the senior care sector to stop focusing only on tactical care-delivery frameworks and start focusing on enhancing seniors’ confidence in your organization and the healthcare system as a whole. This isn’t something marketing alone can fix. It requires a radical mindset shift at all levels and from every part of the healthcare system, including carriers, providers, and sales agents.

We need to get back to the foundations of senior care—helping people. That requires time and effort to make connections, strengthen relationships, and maintain trust. It sounds simple, but it isn’t easy.

While a plethora of data and new technologies promise to change healthcare for the better in the near and long term, we can’t afford to sacrifice the human side of things. Without emotion and meaning, senior care is just a brutalized and brutalizing business. Seniors deserve better.

There’s more senior-care thought leadership here. Check it out.

The post It’s Not Enough to Deliver Care—Senior Care Must Deliver Consumer Confidence Too appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

• Carriers must recognize consumer mistrust and frustration. 

• Health insurance data paints a paradoxical picture. 

• Insurance companies can increase consumers’ health and insurance literacy. 

• Validating consumers’ biases first helps change the conversation later. 

• Fight emotion with emotion, not reason or logic. 

• Positive stories need to be repeated—but your actions speak louder than words. 

• Empower consumers to be smarter healthcare shoppers to reduce their costs. 

• Disrupt the status quo in a way that’s unique to your business. 

Kyla Scanlon coined the phrase “vibecession” in a 2022 Substack. The phrase describes how people’s feelings about the economy contradicted the data. People believed the economy was in a recession even though the data painted a fairly rosy picture. Basically, the vibes were bad, hence vibecession.

Health insurance carriers now find themselves in a vibecession-like situation after a tumultuous 2024 and 2025 that promises to extend into an even messier 2026 and beyond.

Consumer sentiment’s in the red 

Consumer sentiment with health insurance has fallen precipitously:

• Healthcare quality and coverage have the lowest positive ratings since 2001. 

• They believe insurance carriers play too big a part in health policy. 

• A pricey, often unaffordable cost burden that too often delays care. 

• Unforeseen bills, in-network claims denials and denied prior authorizations.  

The vibes are bad. Like, really, really bad.

Health insurance data isn’t clear cut 

In today’s data-driven world, we treat data like an oracle. We say, the data says! But what exactly does it say and who decides? Consider these seemingly contradictory data points.

Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that 94.39% of 2024 Medicare Advantage and 96.30% of Medicare Part D claims were paid properly. Yet of the top 10 Medicare Advantage providers, 9 overbilled, according to the Inspector General or were accused of fraud by a whistleblower or the U.S. government.

KFF found that 73% of U.S. adults say delays and denials in prior authorizations are major problems. At the same time, 93+% of medical services and 92+% of prescription medications are not subject to prior-authorization review.

Is the math not mathing, or could it be that the truth is more complicated and nuanced? Regardless of which data points are “right,” health insurance carriers need to adjust to the vibes.

Lesson #1: The confusion is real 

Economics, finance, and money are hard. At least for me, which is why I’m a writer. I get the basics of supply and demand, but as soon as you start talking about compound derivatives and futures, my mind is wiped clean as a chalkboard.

Apparently the same goes for most Americans, with majorities getting it wrong on when we were or weren’t in a recession, the rise of costs vs. wages, wealth accumulation and poverty.

With health insurance, many of us fall into the confusion boat. As Larry Levitt and Drew Altman said in a 2023 JAMA article, “the reality is that many people are hopelessly confused by how their insurance works.” Consumers may have unrealistic or inaccurate expectations of how health insurance works. They don’t understand how to choose the right plan for them or what costs to expect in their real lives, especially unforeseen ones.

Carriers can help increase healthcare literacy by simplifying complexity and increasing transparency. They’ve been doing this already with enrollment assessments, guided onboarding via apps, comparison guides with real-world examples and benefit reminders, to name a few.

But there’s more they could do. Here are a couple examples:

• Use member and claims data to proactively communicate when providers leave the network and provide guidance on how to find another one. Even if a member is enrolled in a PPO, carriers could use past claims to infer members’ main providers. This helps carriers get ahead of a potential problem and alerts the member that someone’s watching out for them. 

• Trigger automatic communication journeys once someone submits an appeal or a complaint. Most people don’t know that they have the right to appeal denials or which government agency they can contact for help. Giving members this information enhances trust and confidence. They’re more likely to see carriers as doing the right thing for the member over their bottom line. 

Photo by Nik on Unsplash 

Lesson #2: You can’t overcome confirmation bias 

If new information won over old positions, then we’d be able to change our minds on a dime. But the truth is, we often double down, even on decisions we know are bad, like making one more bet to get out of the hole or dating that person hoping one day they’ll change.

That’s why confirmation bias is so powerful. The more confident we are in an initial choice, the more biased we become, seeking out only information to reinforce our beliefs and blocking out information that contradicts it.

Growing up, my dad always called out gasoline prices. Like him, I became a watchdog. When prices dropped, I barely registered it; instead, I steadied myself for costs to skyrocket again. And because they always did, I was proven right. See, gas is sooo expensive. Eggs became the gasoline of the vibecession, with abundant sticker shock and negative media coverage.

Rather than try to convince consumers they’re wrong, carriers should first validate their biases.

• Yes, health insurance is hard to understand.  

• Yes, navigating the healthcare system is the worst.  

• Yes, denied or delayed coverage is frustrating. 

And then do everything they can to say and do the opposite.

• Make it excessively simple to understand coverage.  

• Make navigating the system 1% easier year over year.  

• Be more transparent about what services or claims are typically denied to both members and providers.  

• Provide tips to members on how to appeal denials. 

• Host workshops with providers on how to better submit more accurate claims. 

It’s cathartic to kvetch, but it’s more important to be strategic. Once you’ve validated their biases, you have a better chance to reframe and redirect the conversation.

Lesson #3: Feelings beat facts in the long run 

Not just one, but seven studies confirmed that people who make decisions based on feelings are more rigid in their defense of those feelings, especially over time. “What we document is a basic effect where deciding based on feelings seems to offer people more choice protection,” said Yale researcher Taly Reich.

Emotions are automatic and unconscious. We can’t choose how we feel. Emotions color our worlds, opinions, and perceptions. And they’re as sticky as a broken jar of honey.

When consumers feel the economy is depressed, distressed, or uncertain, there are no facts you can use to convince them otherwise. The same is true of consumer sentiment toward health insurance.

Carriers need to fight feelings with feelings. Infuse your messaging with emotionally resonant words like “frustrating,” “thrilling,” “relaxing,” “satisfying,” etc. Get inside consumers’ heads to figure out what resonates most with them, not what you want them to know about you.

One way to do this could be leaning into the feeling consumers want. For example, consumers want to feel like their carrier has their back, understands them, and cares about them—they want a feeling of trust. Carriers need to lean into security, empathy, integrity, and hope. Not in a way that ignores reality through spin but that instead reinforces credibility. In practice, this could be acknowledging a denial is frustrating and confusing and also providing a simple pathway to appeal it.

Addressing consumers’ needs and achieving your business objectives are not mutually exclusive. You just need to find the right angle to approach both.

Lesson #4: Repeat, repeat, repeat 

People perceive repeated information as more truthful because the more we hear something, the easier it is to process. When we hear again and again how bad the economy is from our friends, neighbors, family, coworkers, social media, and the mainstream media, it’s no wonder we believe it’s true.

The more we hear about denied claims, delayed prior authorizations, network changes, and formulary disasters, the more we believe they are not just true but rampant.

Here’s another truth: you can’t stop people from talking to each other, but you can put your consumers at the center of everything you do. That’s the Zappos effect.

It’s not enough for you to repeat positive stories about yourself as a carrier. Members must repeat them too via word of mouth, social posts, and online reviews. The more you can surprise and delight your members, the more they’ll tell others, becoming promoters rather than detractors.

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash

Lesson #5: We’re living in an affordability crisis 

Steven Pinker says humanity in 2025 is flourishing despite some setbacks. Yet my Spidey senses have been on high alert for half a decade now. One reason for the alert is the steep cost of living. Once-affordable cities like Denver, my forever home, have seen prices tick up and up to the point where previously comfortable locals now feel cash-strapped.

Economics reporter Annie Lowrey explains how our price sensitivity got cranked up to 11, leading to an affordability crisis for our biggest expenses like healthcare and elder care. She says, “…we don’t have better health outcomes than other countries…we just literally pay more.” Consumers feel this most with out-of-pocket costs. They’re shouldering more of the costs with no Atlas shrug in sight.

The word “patient” comes from the Latin for “bearing, supporting, suffering, enduring, permitting.” No wonder many consumers remain passive, letting healthcare happen to them—it’s right there in the name.

Carriers can do more to educate and empower healthcare consumers to bring their savvy in other shopping realms to healthcare.

• Teach them how to shop for providers for both quality and cost.  

• Educate them about quality of care over quantity of care.  

• Give them a guide to the right level of care when they need it, such as telehealth, home-based, or urgent care.  

• Be relentless in your promotion of preventive care, screenings, and vaccinations. 

SCAN Health gets the assignment 

The Medicare sea of sameness hits high tide during the Annual Election Period (AEP), October 15–December 7. SCAN Health’s 2026 AEP campaign is a master class in differentiation and meeting consumers where they are emotionally. Here’s how they nail every vibecession lesson.

Lesson #1: The confusion is real 

Instead of denying it or doubling down on self-protection, SCAN Health says the quiet part out loud: health insurance is broken. This says to the consumer: your confusion isn’t your fault; it’s the industry’s fault. It’s unfair to expect you to overcome a gargantuan mess by yourself. That’s why we’re here to help you.

Lesson #2: You can’t overcome confirmation bias 

Rather than combat bias, SCAN Health embraces it. Their video ad speaks to the inanity of a robot not being able to get your name right, the crazy-making experience of filling out forms with required, yet ambiguous, fields, and the quiet rage of being told your prescription isn’t covered.

Lesson #3: Feelings beat facts in the long run 

SCAN Health’s campaign drips with emotion. Let me diagram the following sentence to show you how: “Let’s face it, sometimes trying to use your health plan can leave you guessing. From hidden costs to unclear coverage, it’s enough to make your head spin.”

• “Let’s face it” is conversational and real. It immediately creates a sense of intimacy with the reader. 

• “can leave you guessing” makes you feel seen and understood. The speaker knows all about the anxiety guessing brings. 

• “hidden costs to unclear coverage” speaks to feelings of surprise, confusion, disappointment, hostility, and betrayal consumers can feel when using their coverage. 

• “make your head spin” embodies the overwhelmed, worried, fearful, powerless feelings many consumers experience when selecting and using a health plan. 

Lesson #4: Repeat, repeat, repeat 

Over the course of the ad, SCAN Health repeats its key messages: health insurance is broken, and we’re fighting to change it. They do it visually and verbally.

• Direct mailers that all look and sound the same. 

• Frantically hitting enter on the keyboard over and over to no avail. 

• Slamming hands on tables and counters in exasperation. 

Lesson #5: We’re living in an affordability crisis 

SCAN Health’s declaration of “people over profits” puts affordability front and center. It’s an implicit promise that they won’t increase prices to appease shareholders or cave to market pressures.

Don’t misread me. My message isn’t to create a copy-cat campaign from the SCAN Health playbook, but to use these lessons as a framework to help you come at consumer relationships and marketing differently. How these lessons come to life should be unique to you as a carrier based on your mission, company values, key differentiators, and/or value proposition. If integrity is a core value, lean into that with radical transparency. If you’re known for your digital tools, double down to make them even better for members.

If you’re not sure where to start, we’re here to help. Let’s start dreaming.

The post 5 Lessons Health Insurance Carriers Can Learn from the Vibecession  appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.

• You can’t predict the future, but you can plan for it.
• Opt for long-term thinking (years) over short-term thinking (days, weeks, months or quarters).
• When you hit a roadblock, adapt rather than give up. The how may change but your what and why likely stays the same.
• Feel the feels but don’t get overwhelmed by them. Create some distance by figuring what what’s going on for you and why.
• Sustainability, adaptability and emotional intelligence are interconnected. You need all three to get ahead in uncertain times.

There’s a military saying that we can’t fight the next war with tactics from the previous one. The same holds true in business (and in life).

We can’t predict when the next recession, pandemic, disaster or disrupter might hit. Chances are that when it does happen, it won’t look or feel like the past, even if there are similarities.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to plan. In fact, planning remains foundational to success. Here’s what we can do today to help weather the Next Big Thing.

Photo by Fauzan Saari on Unsplash

Eyes on the long-term prize

When we think about long-term versus short-term success, our mentality and metrics change:

• We focus not only on the current quarter but also the next 20-plus quarters. 
• We think about the ripple effect of decisions and their implications down the line. 
• We understand we can’t solve one thing just to create ten new problems. 
• We work backwards from the end goal and calibrate our decisions accordingly. 

Long-term thinking tends to lend itself toward greater sustainability. Here’s how:

• We carry less debt because we’ve been proactive upfront
  • We aren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul
  • We don’t have as high of costs
  • We waste fewer resources
  • We don’t make shortsighted decisions that put us in a bind
• We make smarter investments
  • We’re focused on efficiency
  • We allocate resources wisely
  • Our results compound
  • We can meaningfully measure our progress
• We focus on relationships
  • We’re all on the same page in the same playbook
  • We make coordination and collaboration a breeze
  • We’re resilient to setbacks because we are focused on the goal

We might not get it 100 percent right, but we likely won’t get it 100 percent wrong either.

The name of the game? Adaptation.

Change can be a welcome adventure. But when we’ve worked for months, years and even decades to get where we are, we tend to shirk change. We won’t allow all that time and energy to be wasted. It has to count for something.

But here’s the thing: it does count. It got us where we needed to go. Having a plan is simply a map; it’s not the actual journey.

When we come across a giant boulder that wasn’t on the map, we can’t simply keep on keepin’ on. We can lament the fact of the boulder and how it wasn’t a part of our beautifully rendered map, but eventually, if we want to get anywhere, we’ll have to alter course. We have to figure out a path around, over or through depending on our available skills, resources, tools and time.

We’re still aiming for the initial destination, we’re just going about it in a different way. Cultivate a mindset of adaptability, and change becomes a challenge rather than a burden. Said another, your what and why stays the same but your how shifts.

Photo by Kit (formerly ConvertKit) on Unsplash

I’ve always wanted to be a writer because I loved reading. For too long a time, I believed becoming a writer would just magically happen. Finally, I got serious about it and started taking classes at Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop.

I then applied to in-person MFA programs in Colorado, but got rejected from every program. I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I went to AWP. There I learned about low-residency programs that let you maintain your daily life while working one-on-one with an advisor during the semester and going to campus for in-person workshops and lectures every six months. I applied to VCFA and got in.

I’ve since written a short story manuscript, essay manuscript, poems, arts criticism and have begun a children’s picture book series. Oh, and I write for a living. I’m a legit writer now!

The emotions have it

Meditators often talk about our lizard brains, that primal part of the brain that drives our basic needs, in addition to being jerked around by our emotions. We often mistake feelings for facts and construct entire stories for those emotions within nanoseconds.

Rarely do we interrogate the stories we tell ourselves. Too often, we get stuck in our lizard brains—fight, flight or freeze—when things get uncertain. We make knee-jerk reactions based on emotions rather than facts.

One study found that “anger increases perceived control and certainty—two key drivers of risk judgments. Consequently, angry individuals view risky situations more optimistically and make risk-seeking choices… In contrast, fear undermines a sense of individual control and certainty, leading to the opposite effect.”

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

Instead of compartmentalizing or suppressing our emotions, we can work with them by investigating them and reframing the story we’re telling ourselves about them. We need to cultivate emotional resilience and adaptivity. We need to acknowledge what we’re feeling and why we’re feeling it before we can make sound decisions. When we make decisions in a state of calm, we’re more likely to think clearly.

Thanks to many years of mediation, therapy, Esther Perel and Bréné Brown, here’s what I try to ask myself:

• What’s the story I’m telling myself about this situation?
• Could there be other explanations for it? If so, what are they?
• Why is this affecting me this way?
• What’s this really about?
• Why do I feel that way?
• How can I respond rather than react?
• How can I stay cool on the outside when my insides go bonkers?

Everything is connected

Long-term sustainability, adaptability, emotional intelligence. It’s all interconnected. Trying to do one without the other is like rowing a boat without paddles. We just end up nowhere fast.

It can be easy to succumb to anxiety and fear, to make hasty and/or bad decisions that prioritize the immediate future at the expense of the distant future and staunchly dig our heels in no matter what. It takes courage and guts to do things the better way, which is sometimes the harder way. But it pays.

Looking for more musings and metaphors? Tumble down our rabbit hole.

The post 3 Ways to Plan for the Next Big Thing  appeared first on Heinrich Marketing.