NBC: How Americans Can Save Money When Choosing a Health Insurance Plan

Most Americans struggle to figure out which health insurance plan will save them money. A study of almost 24,000 employees at a major Fortune 100 company found that 61% of them chose the wrong plan for their needs. The researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who conducted the study estimated that the average employee could have saved $372 per year by choosing a different plan. “The majority of employees chose plans that were more expensive, regardless of how much health care that they actually consumed the following year, and on average, the cost of these choices was about 2% of salary,” Carnegie Mellon associate professor of economics Saurabh Bhargava, who authored the study, told CNBC. This is costing Americans. In 2018, over 8% of Americans’ total household spending went toward health-care costs. This represents about a 37% increase since 2004, up from 5.9% of total household spending. Read more on NBC.