Many consumers have few choices for their health-care coverage, because employers offer few options.
As HMOs continue to merge, there are even fewer choices this fall. But it is no easier to pick a good health-care plan now than it was in the early 1990s, when employers first began pushing their workers into managed care. In this report, we offer strategies for choosing a health-care plan and avoiding potential traps. Some plans clearly are better than others, as our reader survey shows. In short, health-care information today is as confusing as product information and labeling were some 30 years ago.