Citizens for the Right to Know, whose 70 members include organizations representing physicians, patients, pharmacists, consumers in general and disease-support societies, telephoned 48 HMOs and found that 10 percent of the customer service reps could not say what a formulary is. 21 percent of the plans faxed or mailed formularies upon request. There are a lot of ways to rank health plans. Some widely publicized national reports have emphasized profitability, which is important to investors. A ranking by price would, to some degree, be important to premium payers, mostly employers.
Nobody is willing to go out on a limb and rate medical care itself.