Three sources, three different answers
Anyone searching for health insurers “ranked by customer satisfaction” will find three kinds of source, and they rarely agree. That is expected. A satisfaction survey asks members how the plan felt to use. A quality rating checks whether the plan's members got the care guidelines say they should. A complaint index counts how often members were unhappy enough to complain to a regulator, adjusted for how big the company is. A plan can score well on one and badly on another, and all three facts can be true at once.
| Source | What it measures | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| J.D. Power U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study | Member satisfaction, surveyed | Score out of 1,000, reported by region — there is no national winner |
| NCQA Health Plan Ratings | Clinical quality and member experience | Five-star scale, by plan and market |
| NAIC Consumer Information Source | Complaints to regulators, against market share | Complaint index: 1.0 is average for a company of that size |
| CMS Star Ratings (Medicare Advantage only) | Medicare plan quality | Five-star scale, 5 is highest |
J.D. Power: what members say
J.D. Power's U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study is the main satisfaction survey for commercial health plans. The 2025 study was based on responses from 39,797 commercial health plan members across 147 health plans in 22 states and regions, collected from September 2024 through March 2025, and scored on a 1,000-point scale. The national average was 563, and only 56% of members said they were satisfied with their coverage.
The gap between the best and the rest is wide: the highest regional scores reached 660, while the lowest regional average was 523. The top performers named in the 2025 study were regional, not national — Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in California at 648 points, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in Virginia at 660, and a tie in the South Atlantic region between Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Capital District Physicians' Health Plan (CDPHP) in New York, both at 634. That regional reporting is the point: a plan that tops its region may not operate in your state at all, and a national average tells you nothing about the plan you can actually buy.
What separated the top plans, according to J.D. Power, was member understanding: members who understood their financial responsibility and their network were far less likely to report a denied claim or a doctor who turned out to be out of network. Satisfaction, in other words, tracks clarity as much as generosity.
NCQA: quality ratings, not satisfaction
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) publishes Health Plan Ratings for commercial, Medicare and Medicaid plans. The ratings run on a five-star scale and combine clinical quality measures — whether members received recommended screening, follow-up and chronic-disease care — with member-experience survey results. A plan can earn a high NCQA rating for doing the clinical work well while its members still find it hard to use, which is why the rating is a quality check first and a satisfaction check second.
NCQA also accredits health plans, which is a separate process from the star rating. When you read an NCQA figure, check which it is — an accreditation, a star rating, and a single measure (such as a CAHPS survey result) are three different claims.
NAIC complaint data: the regulator's record
The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) runs the Consumer Information Source, a free public record that lets you look up a company by state and insurance type and see its complaint history, licensing and complaint index. The complaint index is the useful number: it compares a company's share of complaints with its share of the market, so a large insurer is not punished simply for having more policyholders. A score of 1.0 is average for a company of that size. Below 1.0 means fewer complaints than expected; above 1.0 means more — a score of 2.0 means roughly double the complaints of a typical company its size.
Complaint data is the least flattering of the three sources and the most concrete: these are complaints filed with state regulators, not reviews. Check the index for your state and for the line you would buy — health, not the company's auto or home record — and look at the trend over the three years the record covers, not a single year.
CMS Star Ratings for Medicare plans
Medicare Advantage plans carry a separate rating: the CMS Star Ratings, on a five-star scale, with 5 as the highest. Every year Medicare evaluates plans on quality and performance measures, and the stars are published so shoppers can compare. A Medicare plan's star rating and a commercial plan's J.D. Power score are not comparable — different populations, different measures, different scales — so keep them in separate columns when you compare.
How to use the three together
Start with the plan type and the state: a commercial J.D. Power score for California says nothing about a Medicare Advantage plan in Florida. Then read the three sources as three questions. Did members find the plan easy to use — J.D. Power, for your region? Did the plan deliver the care it should — NCQA, for that plan and market? Did members complain to a regulator more often than a company its size should expect — NAIC, for your state and line? A plan that is strong on all three is a stronger candidate than a plan that is strong on one. A plan that is weak on complaints but strong on satisfaction deserves a closer look at what the complaints were about, not an instant rejection.
And remember what none of these sources does: none of them tells you what a plan will cost you, whether your doctor is in its network, or whether it covers the drug you take. Satisfaction is one column of a comparison, not the comparison. To run that comparison, the health insurance comparison tool on this site puts premium, network and cost side by side.
Worked example
Consider an ILLUSTRATIVE reader comparing two commercial plans available in the same state. The reader looks up the J.D. Power regional score for each plan's region, the NCQA star rating for each plan, and the NAIC complaint index for each company in that state and line. One plan scores above the J.D. Power average and carries a complaint index below 1.0; the other scores below average with an index above 1.0. That is a real signal — but the reader still has to check the network, the formulary and the premium before choosing, because none of the three sources covers those. The example's value is the method — same state, same plan type, three sources — not any score in it, and no real plan is named or scored here.
Illustrative example only — not a fact about any real policy.