35% of Retirees Don’t Know What Their Vision and Dental Insurance Options Are

BY Rachel Cagle
Featured image for “35% of Retirees Don’t Know What Their Vision and Dental Insurance Options Are”

If you're retired or getting ready to be, odds are you're unsure how you're going to get vision insurance. That's according to a recent survey commissioned by VSP Vision Care. A combined total of 332 retirees and pre-​retirees participated in the survey.

According to AudienceSCAN, 35.1% of Health Insurance Buyers are over the age of 65. Nearly 38% are retired already.

The majority of respondents were sure of their post-​retirement medical plans (67%), but far fewer were as sure of their vision (35%) or dental options (35%). That means nearly two-​thirds (64%) of respondents planning for retirement were unsure if they will have access to vision coverage in retirement or, in fact, were convinced that they won't. That's a coverage gap that would be unheard of on the medical side. 40% of retired respondents reported that they do not have vision coverage at all. Yet only 2% of them said the same about their medical plan.

This is a problem since, according to AudienceSCAN, 55.9% of Health Insurance Buyers plan to make an appointment with an eye doctor this year.

How to explain the difference? One possibility is simply that the current generation of retirement-​age workers have been accustomed to benefits being provided by their employers. Only major medical coverage has a history of widely available, albeit expensive, coverage options outside the work place.

But the marketplace is changing. As employers look for ways to cut benefits costs and as providers look for new opportunities to reach people directly, new options are emerging and, being new, are less well-known.

Sending direct mail to consumers of potential retirement age is a good way to alert them to the fact that there may be gaps in their insurance. Last year, according to AudienceSCAN, 64.5% of Health Insurance Buyers took action after receiving ads and/​or coupons in the mail. TV is another solid method since TV commercials drove 63% of this audience to action last year. Nearly 23% of Health Insurance Buyers get most of their local news from newspapers and 51.2% reacted to this medium's ads last year.

AudienceSCAN data is available for your applications and dashboards through the SalesFuel API. Media companies and agencies can access AudienceSCAN data through the AudienceSCAN Reports in AdMall.


Share: