Facebook, Twitter users have few nice things to say about health insurers

When people take to Facebook and Twitter to talk about health plans, they're usually not saying good things.

That is according to information compiled by Amplicate, a New York social media analytics firm that tracks comments about businesses.

The firm, in a report released Sept. 29, examined Twitter posts and Facebook comments during the previous 12 months that expressed either love or hate for a health insurer. Their assessments ignore neutral or balanced comments. Only 30% of the 2,311 comments fell into the "love" category.

In January, when many insurers announced or implemented rate increases, public opinion about insurers reached its lowest point of the year -- only 15% of comments were positive.

Medicare was both the most discussed and most loved coverage, eliciting 42% positive comments.

By contrast, comments and tweets about Aetna qualified as expressing "love" only about 9% of the time.

"We track a number of consumer surveys and data platforms, including social media, and use results as a learning experience to improve products and services," Aetna spokeswoman Cynthia Michener said in an emailed statement. "Aetna typically is more positive than negative. The vast majority of posts for the health care sector, including providers, is neutral (a sentiment that is not discussed in the news release). In social media, measuring sentiment is still as much art as science and changes daily for any topic or industry."

Amplicate Chief Executive Officer Juan Alvarez said social media increasingly reflects broader public opinion, not only a subset of the wider population.

"Social media totally reflects what people believe -- they want to get their opinion heard, to share it with their friends," he said. "It's completely a reflection of clients and users."

He said health insurers are not the most discussed companies. Compared with the 2,311 posts about health insurers, grocery stores and other industries have elicited tens of thousands of tweets and comments during the 12 months.

Most industries that Amplicate tracks have elicited more "love" than "hate" on social media: a positive rate of 56% for grocery store chains and 70% for fast-food chains, for example. Banks were one of the few industries that had a larger percentage of negative comments than health insurers. Amplicate said only 16% of comments about banks fell in the "love" category.

The volume of comments Amplicate tracked about physicians was very low -- only 91 in the previous 12 months, with a 68% "love" rate. The firm analyzes why people dislike a given company. For health insurers, Alvarez said the top complaints related to needing a drug or treatment that wasn't covered. Another top problem was finding a doctor in an insurer's network.

Amplicate does not track details about who is posting comments, such as how many people commenting about an insurer are doctors and how many are members or employees of a given company.