Kaiser: Producers' individual health role may be growing

Insurance agents and brokers may account for a bigger share of individual major medical insurance sales today than they did last year, or the year before that.

Consumers who bought their own health coverage for 2016 are more likely to say they got it through a producer.

A survey team at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation regularly asks U.S. adults ages 18 to 64 where they got their health coverage. The latest poll results come from surveys done from Feb. 10 through Feb. 18, 2016.

See also: Humana and Aetna talk about producers

Only 8 percent of the consumers who participated in the latest poll said they had bought their own individual or family commercial plan coverage. But 38 percent of the participants with their own coverage said they got it through an agent or broker.

The percentage of consumers with individual or family coverage who said they bought it through a producer is up from 33 percent in March 2015, and up from less than 17 percent in February 2014.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) public exchange system accounted for about 38 percent of the individual and family coverage holders this year. That’s up from less than 17 percent in February 2014, but it’s down from 44 percent in March 2015.