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.
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.
John is the editorial director for CarInsurance.com, Insurance.com and Insure.com. Before joining QuinStreet, John was a deputy editor at The Wall Street Journal and had been an editor and reporter at a number of other media outlets where he covered insurance, personal finance, and technology.
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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.
AM Best's Financial Strength Rating is an independent opinion of an insurer's financial strength and ability to meet its ongoing insurance policy and contract obligations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most customers believe Aetna can be trusted. It received a 74% approval rating in this category. Kaiser Permanente led this category.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sources:
Aetna website and CVS Health corporate information. Accessed January 2024.
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:
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.