Aflac Organizes Medical Debt Awareness Campaign

Aflac — a company that sells insurance policies that fill in some of the holes in major medical insurance coverage — is sponsoring a medical debt awareness campaign.

The Columbus, Georgia-based insurer has started the Close the Gap campaign with three major components:

• An animated short film, “The Park Bench,” that was written and directed by Rob Edwards, who was nominated for the Academy Award for his script for Disney’s “Treasure Planet.”

• A new effort to communicate the results from its 2021 Aflac Health Care Issues survey, which showed that about 10% of U.S. households with health insurance face out-of-pocket medical costs over $1,500 per year, and 24% of the insured survey participants have no savings at all.

• A grant program for people and communities hurt by medical debt.

The medical debt burden is related to disparities in health and wealth in the U.S., and it has disproportionate effects on people of color and those in low-income communities, Aflac says.

The Close the Gap program “shines a light on people who fall in the gap where health insurance ends and medical bills begin to pile up,” Aflac says.

What It Means for Agents and Brokers

Disability insurers and other insurers have envied the power of the Aflac Duck for years.

If the new Close the Gap campaign is successful, it could buoy sellers of all supplemental health insurance products — such as accident insurance, hospital indemnity insurance, critical insurance and Medicare supplement insurance — that help consumers pay major medical insurance deductibles, co-payments and coinsurance amounts.

The campaign could also give retirement income planners new language for communicating with clients about pre-retirement and post-retirement health cost planning.