'Tiered' Insurance Confounds Consumers, Docs In Mass.

Sarah Bechta, a wife, mother and physician from Northborough, Mass. sat down at her kitchen table with a folder full of brochures, pages from insurance websites and a hand-drawn spreadsheet to try to find out if a new "tiered" health plan would be the cheapest option for her family.

She started by comparing her premium for traditional insurance and a tiered plan. Tiered insurance is being offered by various companies in Massachusetts as a way to meet employers’ demands for cheaper insurance premiums.

A tiered plan would cut Bechta’s premium in half and "would save about $1,400 a year. It made me stop and think," she said.

But would she actually save that $1,400 or would it be eaten up in higher co-payments and deductibles?

"That was the thing that was really hard to predict. I could not figure it out," Bechta said, even though, as a doctor, Bechta believes that she's "as capable, or more capable, than everybody else who's looking at this information."

Read the full story at: http://tinyurl.com/6pa9grn

Sources: WBUR, NPR, Kaiser Health News