Health Finder is a web-based decision support tool that provides Medicare beneficiaries with information about their coverage options and personalized cost estimates. It is designed to be an easy way for Medicare beneficiaries to acquire information about and shop for a prescription drug plan in order to reduce their out-of-pocket costs.

A recent redesign has improved the user experience, but there are still improvements to be made in the coming years. For example, the new Plan Finder includes a mobile version of the site and a new and improved plan menu that is easier to read than its predecessor. The plan menu is also more intuitively arranged, making it easier to find the most relevant information at a glance.

The most important new feature is a more robust, more accurate and easier to use auto-fill of a beneficiary’s prescription drug list (if they have provided their Medicare ID number). This allows the machine to produce cost estimates that are both more detailed and more precise than ever before.

There is also an impressively designed nifty little widget that displays a plan’s estimated monthly premium and total annual drug cost in a small font (exhibit 1). In our experiment, this display was the best at identifying the cheapest options, but it could be much better if it included a few other more useful information points.

For many consumers, it’s the plan premium that matters most to them. In fact, a large body of research shows that consumers are more likely to make a purchase if they see the lowest premium available to them. The Medicare Plan Finder has an opportunity to harness this principle by reverting to its default sorting rule, which puts the plans with the lowest total annual drug costs at the top of its menu.