Aetna health insurance review and ratings 2024

Aetna, which ranked well in a number of Insure.com survey categories, is tied for 10th on Insure.com’s 2024 Best Health Insurance Companies list – earning 3.7 stars out of 5.

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Our take

Aetna is worth considering if you’re looking for an insurance provider with a big coverage area. The company, which is part of CVS Health, ranked high for its low deductibles and digital experience.

The company received an above-average 3.5 out of 5 stars from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. NCQA evaluates healthcare plans on, among other things, member satisfaction.

Overall, Aetna tied with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan at No. 10 on Insure.com’s ranking of the Best Health Insurance Companies of 2024

Below is Insure.com’s review of the company. It’s based on third-party metrics and an in-depth survey of insurance customers. Find the full methodology here, including an explanation of our survey scores.

Aetna
Aetna Ratings
Overall Rating: 3.7
Price/Affordability: 3.9
NCQA: 3.46
Customer Satisfaction: 4.0
AM Best Rating: A

Pros and Cons

Pros:
  • Ranked high in our low deductibles category
  • Ranked high in the digital experience category
  • Has a large footprint
Cons:
  • Customers didn’t rate it as high as others for policy renewals
  • Its provider network was not rated as strongly as others

How much does Aetna insurance cost?

Aetna didn’t rank as well as other companies for affordability. However, the company’s price competitiveness shows up when looking at rates in various states (see below). Kaiser Permanente had the highest star ranking in this category.

Insurance companyPrice/affordability stars
Aetna3.90
Kaiser Permanente4.34
Cigna3.92 

Below is a look at how Aetna’s rates in North Carolina compare with those of UnitedHealthcare and Cigna for similar plans. These are 2024 healthcare exchange rates for a single, 40-year-old male in excellent health with an annual income of $70,000.

Insurance companyRate/MonthPlan
Aetna$468Silver 2 HMO
UnitedHealthcare$531UHC Silver Standard HMO
Cigna$560Connect Silver CMS Standard HMO

How Aetna scores for customer satisfaction

Our survey found that 72% of Aetna’s customers think it does a good job at delivering customer satisfaction – earning almost 4 stars in this category. Still, it trailed Kaiser Permanente, Highmark and others. However, the company did well when compared with Cigna and UnitedHealthcare in the J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study rankings for the Delaware-West Virginia-Washington, D.C. region.

Insurance companyCustomer satisfaction starsJ.D. Power overall satisfaction score (out of 1,000)
Aetna3.98716
Cigna3.95712
UnitedHealthcare4.06693

How Aetna scores for policy offerings

Aetna has a larger portfolio of policy offerings. But only 73% of customers say they were satisfied, putting it in the lower half of this category. BCBS of Michigan was the top-ranked company here.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who score their insurance company highly for policy offerings
Aetna73%
BCBS of Michigan88%
Kaiser Permanente86%

Would customers recommend Aetna to others?

Yes, with 83% of customers saying they would recommend the company to others. However, several companies ranked higher. BCBS of Michigan led this category, with all its customers saying they would recommend it to others.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who would recommend their health insurance company to others
Aetna83%
BCBS of Michigan100%
Horizon BCBS97%

How trustworthy is Aetna?

Most customers believe Aetna can be trusted. It received a 74% approval rating in this category. Kaiser Permanente led this category.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who say they trust their health insurance company
Aetna74%
Kaiser Permanente86%
Highmark83%

Do current Aetna customers plan to renew?

The vast majority do. When customers were asked if they planned to renew with Aetna, 87% said they would. But several companies ranked higher in this category, which was led by Highmark and BCBS of Michigan.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who plan to renew with their health insurance company
Aetna87%
Highmark98%
BCBS of Michigan98%

How Aetna scores for digital experience

Aetna’s website and digital experience was No. 3 out of the companies we ranked – but it should be noted that none of the companies we ranked did especially well here. 

Insurance companyPercent of customers who highly rank the company’s digital experience 
Aetna25%
Kaiser Permanente32%
Molina23%

How Aetna scores for low deductibles

Aetna ranked alongside Cigna and HCSC at the top of this category when we asked customers to rank companies for having low deductibles. But this was another category in which no company was rated particularly high.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who highly rank the company for low deductibles
Aetna31%
Cigna31%
HCSC31%

How Aetna scores for its provider network

A healthcare provider network is a group of doctors, specialists and hospitals that provide services to insured members at a lower cost than providers outside the network. A strong provider network can be a key consideration when shopping for a health plan. Aetna ranked in the lower half of the top companies in this category. But this is another category in which no companies did particularly well. Molina led this category.

Insurance companyPercent of customers who highly rank the company’s provider network
Aetna21%
Molina31%
Highmark27%

Aetna health insurance coverage options

  • Insurance for families and individuals
  • Health insurance via employers
  • Medicare and Medicaid plans
  • Military plans
  • Student plans
  • International plans
  • Pharmacy plans

Other Aetna services

  • Dental 
  • Vision
  • Virtual care options

States where Aetna offers coverage

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Table
States where Aetna offers coverage
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
Washington D.C.
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY
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Company background

Aetna

Aetna is one of the largest health insurance providers in the country and also one of the oldest. Its history traces back to the Aetna Fire Insurance Co., which was established in the early 1800s.

It began offering health insurance in 1899 and in 1907 expanded into the growing arena of automobile insurance. It continued to grow over the years, acquiring various companies, and in 1999 it purchased Prudential HealthCare.

In 2017, Aetna became an acquisition target itself, with CVS successfully launching a $69 billion bid for the company. The merger provided an avenue to direct a steady stream of clients to the pharmacy giant’s drug stores.

It serves about 39 million people with its health insurance offerings.

Resources & Methodology

Sources:

Aetna website and CVS Health corporate information. Accessed January 2024.

Methodology

Insure.com in the fall of 2023 surveyed more than 1,750 insurance consumers (1,433 people with health insurance). The survey was conducted by online market research company Slice MR.

Respondents were asked to name their insurer and then grade it in a number of categories, including ease of service and policy offerings. The percentage of respondents who said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their insurer is presented in the results.

In addition, the editors also created star rankings for each company. Respondents were asked to pick their insurer’s top three attributes out of the more than the dozen they were presented – including categories such as customer satisfaction and price/affordability. The number of responses for each of those attributes was totaled and then divided by the number of each company’s customers who responded to that survey question to create the star ranking.

Respondents were also asked if they would recommend their insurer to someone else and if they planned to renew their policies. The percentage who said yes is presented in the results.

They also were given the statement “I trust my insurance company” and asked if they strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement. The percentage of those who said they agreed or strongly agreed is presented in the results.

The editors compiled the survey results and then selected – based on the number of survey responses – the top companies for further evaluation. Insure.com needed 30 or more of a health insurer’s customers to respond to the survey for a company to be included in the ranking.

They then collected AM Best financial stability ratings and National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) ratings, which evaluate health plans on, among other things, member satisfaction.

With the help of Prof. David Marlett, Ph.D., managing director of the Brantley Risk and Insurance Center at Appalachian State University, the editors created a rating system to determine which insurance companies were best in each sector. For health insurers, we used the following weights to calculate the overall score for each company:

  • Survey – 60% of total score (10% for customer satisfaction, 10% trustworthiness, 10% for recommending the carrier to another, 10% if a respondent would renew with their current insurer, and 20% if they consider their insurer the best for affordability)
  • AM Best – 25% of total score
  • NCQA – 15% of total score

Each insurer was awarded from 1 to 5 stars. No insurer in our star ranking received less than 1 star and the highest possible ranking is 5 stars.

On company review pages, the editors compared the profiled insurers in various categories against the leaders in that category or against other top insurers that match up well against the profiled company in terms of size and/or coverage area.

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Mel Duvall
Contributing Researcher

 
  

Mel Duvall is an award-winning senior business writer and communications professional. Mel also served a three-year term on the Mount Royal University Journalism Committee.

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