Top 10 States for Medicare Advantage Search Interest

Medicare Advantage plan issuers seem to be at the top-of-the-world point in the rock star docudrama, where they’re starting to suffer for their success.

Members of Congress are looking at the program for possible bits of cash they could cut out and spend on something else. Investors punished UnitedHealth on Wednesday for suggesting that its 2024 Medicare Advantage program profits could be great, rather than spectacular.

But consumer interest in Medicare Advantage continues to be strong, according to Google Trends, Alphabet’s search engine activity tracking tool.

For a look at the 10 states with the most intense search activity for the term “medicare advantage” since Oct. 14, the day before the current annual enrollment period began, see the accompanying gallery.

What it means: Google Trends can help you understand what people are thinking.

Google Trends: The Google Trends tool can help a user compare how the intensity of search activity for a given term has changed over time and how the intensity for one term compares with the intensity of other terms.

Google Trends can also show how search intensity for the term compares in different geographic regions, such as U.S. states.

The tool takes the top intensity level for the top time period for the most popular term included and sets that as intensity level 100.

The tool expresses the intensity level for every other time period and every other term as a percentage of that top intensity level.

Benchmarking: The term “medicare advantage” performs only moderately well when compared with some other terms of potential interest to retirement planning clients.

Here are the average intensities for five terms for the period from Jan. 1, 2015, through Nov. 30, 2023:

social security: 75
restaurant near me: 32
aetna: 14
mutual fund: 3
medicare advantage: 3

The history: Search activity for “medicare advantage” oscillates over time, but activity during October was the highest ever, up from 95 in October 2022 and up from 89 in October 2021.

Because of the nature of the Medicare Advantage annual enrollment period, which runs from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7 each year, activity during annual enrollment tends to be much higher than at other times of year and peaks at a level much higher than “mutual fund” but still much lower than “restaurant near me.”

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