Do your own research: a prescription easier written than filled

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“I would say that we live in a democracy, and part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research.” – HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.

Medicare Open Enrollment’s annual “experiment” in doing your own research has been with us for sixteen years and runs from October 15^th to December 7^th. Last year, after open enrollment ended, the University of Michigan surveyed 1,796 community-dwelling adults age 65 and older about their decisions for 2026 coverage. 

When Good Enough Is Good Enough—Until It Isn't 

Nearly all those surveyed (96%) were satisfied with their Medicare coverage. 27% didn’t even bother to review their options, even though only 78% of them were satisfied with their existing coverage. In the end, 80% of all Medicare beneficiaries retained their coverage.

Economist Herbert Simon coined the term satisficing to describe these findings. A mashup of satisfying and sufficing, it is a decision-making strategy, such as finding the optimal Medicare plan, that require time, effort, and a willingness to grapple with uncertainty.

Rather than comparing every available option, we set an acceptable threshold and stop searching once we find an option that meets it. Satisficing isn't necessarily irrational; the cost of finding a better alternative may outweigh the benefits. The difficulty, particularly with Medicare coverage, is that consumers cannot know whether their current plan is truly their best option without investing the very time and effort they are trying to avoid.

Confidently Navigating What We Don't Understand 

• 93% were at least somewhat confident about choosing Medicare coverage, yet 23% had little or no understanding of important insurance concepts
• 34% were unaware of any of the specified Medicare policy changes. 
• 36% encountered at least one “challenge” in making a decision. For example, while 69% considered out-of-pocket costs important, 14% reported difficulty estimating total coverage costs.

When information is poorly explained, consumers may not even recognize which questions to ask, suggesting a mismatch between confidence and knowledge.

The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias in which people with limited knowledge or skill may overestimate their competence. Recent research has challenged sweeping interpretations of the effect; however, its underlying insight remains useful: confidence is not necessarily a reliable measure of competence. In the context of Medicare Open Enrollment, the Michigan poll suggests beneficiaries may feel perfectly capable of comparing plans without fully appreciating the complexity of the choices before them. Perhaps confidence arises more from satisficing than understanding.

The Easiest Advice May Come with a Sales Pitch 

Because doing your own research takes time and thought, many beneficiaries turned to sources of expertise. A reported 26% relied primarily on brokers or agents for guidance; 21% consulted health plan websites; 25% used Medicare’s official resources, with another 5% using free local counseling.

Rather than assuming that reliance on outside expertise reflects insufficient diligence by beneficiaries, we can see it as a satisficing approach, in which expertise reduces the cost of acquiring information. All expertise simplifies decision-making by narrowing choice, presenting understandable, relatable comparisons, and highlighting features and benefits.

However, the informational marketplace isn’t neutral. Some sources of expertise have incentives to influence decisions based on that curated information. An insurer may have incentives to make attractive features highly visible while giving less prominence to complicated tradeoffs. 

Medicare Advantage insurers have obvious financial incentives to attract and retain beneficiaries. Their marketing can emphasize easily understood, immediately appealing benefits, such as dental coverage, transportation, or other supplemental offerings, which 41% of beneficiaries identified as important considerations. 

More beneficiaries prioritized out-of-pocket costs (69%), medication coverage (63%), and provider networks (62%). But when serious illness replaces walking wellness, consumers find these consequential differences between plans much harder to evaluate. If making comparisons easier might expose disadvantages in one's own product, the incentive to invest in transparency is weaker.

Choice Is Free. Information Isn't.

Secretary Kennedy has encouraged Americans to "do your own research" when making healthcare decisions. It is an appealing expression of individual autonomy, but the Michigan findings suggest an important limitation. The Michigan poll demonstrates the limitations of the advice to "do your own research." It demonstrates that even when consumers are motivated, experienced, and reasonably confident, obtaining, interpreting, and comparing information can be difficult. Medicare beneficiaries often make decisions with limited time, imperfect understanding, and reliance on information provided by parties with commercial interests.

Medicare Open Enrollment is promoted as an exercise in consumer choice. But a choice is only as meaningful as the information available to make it. When acquiring that information is costly, understanding it requires expertise, and the most accessible explanations come from those with a financial stake in the outcome, perhaps the problem isn't that seniors aren't shopping carefully enough. Perhaps we've designed a marketplace in which selling is considerably easier than informed buying.

Rational behavior in a poorly structured information marketplace can produce satisfactory decisions without being optimal. We have confused giving people choices with giving them the means to choose wisely.

That is not an argument against independent research or individual autonomy. It is an argument for making reliable information easier to acquire, comprehend, and use, while recognizing the incentives of those who supply it and who benefit from leaving that burden with the patient.