Only 10% of Employers Are Confident That Workers Understand Their Healthcare Choices

Healthcare is a major expense for working Americans of all ages, and while some folks don't get a choice in their coverage, many employees have the option to select the right insurance plan for their needs. Unfortunately, a large number of these workers inevitably end up making the wrong decision. In fact, only 10% of companies are very confident that employees understand the choices they're making with health insurance, according to a new report by HSA Bank, a health savings account administrator. And that lack of understanding could end up costing workers big time.

Why your health plan matters

The health insurance plan you choose could dictate how much you ultimately spend on healthcare over the course of a given year. And seeing as how more than 25% of U.S. adults struggle to keep up with their medical bills, it's an important decision to make.

Image source: Getty Images.

So how do you find the right health plan? You'll need to look at a number of factors, both individually and collectively, including:

Your premium cost, which is the amount you'll pay each year for having your health plan. Your copayments, which are what you'll pay each time you visit a provider or fill a prescription. Your deductible, which is the amount you're required to spend before your insurance company will start paying for services. Your plan's coverage and providers, which include the services and treatments your insurance company will pay for, and the network of medical professionals and facilities you're allowed to see and use.

Initially, you might find yourself drawn to the insurance plan with the lowest annual premium. After all, why pay $4,000 a year when you can pay $2,000 off the bat instead? But premiums and deductibles tend to have an inverse relationship, where the more you pay for the former, the less you pay for the latter, and vice versa. And it's that distinction that could end up costing you more money than necessary.

Imagine you're looking at an insurance plan with a $2,000 premium and a $6,000 deductible, versus a plan with a $4,000 premium and a $3,000 deductible. If you don't end up getting sick or hurt, and therefore never have to pay into your deductible, you'll come out ahead financially by choosing the plan with the lower premium. But what happens if you get injured and rack up $6,000 in medical expenses? At that point, you'd pay a total of $8,000 under the first plan, not counting copays: $2,000 in premium costs plus a $6,000 deductible. With the second plan, you'd wind up paying $7,000: that is, $4,000 in premium costs plus a $3,000 deductible. In other words, you'd actually save money with the more expensive plan.

Now this is a very basic example, but the point is to understand that when choosing a health plan, you really need to look at the big picture. A plan with a higher premium may not only result in a lower deductible, but also lower copays and access to a wider network of providers. All of these factors can come together to make your total out-of-pocket costs lower than what you'd ultimately pay for a cheaper plan.

Of course, the extent to which you use your health insurance will also dictate how much you wind up spending. Without a crystal ball, there's no way to know how often you'll end up at the doctor's office and how much your copays or deductible will cost you. But as a general rule, if you're single with no known medical issues, you can often get away with choosing the plan with the lowest premium. Just make sure your preferred doctors are in-network, or that you're open to new providers.

If you have a family, plan on using your insurance more. Children tend to get sick, and there's a good chance you'll frequent the pediatrician throughout the year. If that's the case, then you may be better off with a low-deductible plan, even if its premium is higher.

Finally, don't be afraid to play around with different options from year to year, especially as your healthcare needs change. The more research you do, the better equipped you'll be to choose the right health plan and save the most money in the process.

CBS investors loved Les Moonves, but can he really stay?

CBS investors have long seen CEO Les Moonves as a boon for the company. But they are already envisioning a future without him.

Moonves is still holding onto his job for now, nearly a week after The New Yorker published allegations from six women who said he sexually harassed them.

The CBS (CBS) board of directors opted not to take any action against him, though it did announce on Wednesday that it will hire two law firms to investigate the claims. Moonves is even expected to speak Thursday during the company's quarterly earnings call.

Moonves has acknowledged that he "may have made some women uncomfortable," calling those moments "mistakes." He also insisted that he respected women and that he "abided by the principle that 'no' means 'no,' and I have never misused my position to harm or hinder anyone's career."

But it's not clear whether Moonves will be able to hang on for long. He's already locked in an ugly legal battle with Shari Redstone, whose family has a controlling stake in CBS that Moonves is trying to challenge. The New Yorker investigation could cripple his ability to lead.

Wall Street, meanwhile, has been shaken by the potential for fallout. CBS stock has dropped nearly 9% since news of the allegations surfaced last Friday.

"The added overhang of an investigation of uncertain length with an uncertain outcome will make share outperformance difficult," wrote Doug Creutz, a senior research analyst at Cowen. He downgraded CBS this week.

"As much as we expect CBS staff to try to soldier on, at some level this has to be a distraction," he added.

Moonves has been a favorite among investors, who credit him with the company's success over the past decade. Since the Redstone family split CBS from its other media company, Viacom (VIA), in 2006, CBS stock has more than doubled. The company's broadcast network has been the most-watched for 15 of the last 16 years.

But The New Yorker report is already staining that legacy. The CBS board's decision to keep Moonves on is troublesome, said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research. He questioned why the board did not begin investigating the allegations sooner.

"It makes it look like the board is in the pocket of management," he added.

The problems are complicated further by the battle with Redstone.

The legal dispute dates back to Redstone's attempt to bring CBS and Viacom back together as one company earlier this year. The argument for doing so would be to create a larger company that is able to compete with tech giants and other major media companies, some of which have explored mergers of their own.

There are plenty of questions about whether it would work. Even though Viacom has touted its growth over the last year, CBS is widely seen as the stronger of the two businesses. Earlier this year, Wieser told CNNMoney that CBS would have to invest heavily in Viacom, including in talent, in order to ensure its growth.

Moonves and CBS have resisted the idea, in part because Redstone wanted her favored executive, Viacom CEO Bob Bakish, to take a prominent position at the new company. Moonves wanted his own team.

That spat led to a dramatic attempt by CBS to lessen Redstone's control over the company. In a lawsuit filed in May, CBS said she "improperly interjected herself into negotiations" about the merger. Court documents also claimed Redstone shooed away a potential buyer of CBS, "depriving the board of the opportunity to consider a potentially value-enhancing transaction."

Redstone's holding company, National Amusements, Inc., has called the suit "outrageous," and her team has argued that it's CBS that doesn't have the best interests of shareholders at heart.

A trial taking up the issue of control over CBS is scheduled to start in October.

Some analysts, including Barton Crockett, a senior analyst at B. Riley FBR, say the allegations against Moonves may ultimately not matter for the trial's outcome.

"There's no way the board could credibly drop the lawsuit because of something happening to Les," he added. "That horse has left the barn."

Wieser, the Pivotal analyst, says otherwise: If Moonves is ousted, Redstone probably wins.

"At the end of the day, the most persuasive argument was that CBS under Moonves was better off under his leadership than not," Wieser said. "If he's gone, you can't make that argument anymore."

And skeptics of her strategy fear the results could be costly.

A merged company run by Viacom's management team "would likely be value destructive," wrote Creutz, the Cowen analyst. He suggested that outcome would lead to "a very, very difficult integration process that would likely feature an enormous amount of resentment among CBS staff about how things went down."

Crockett said some kind of merger is probably better for the future of both companies than staying apart �� though he suggested selling off parts of CBS and Viacom to bigger players, rather than bringing them together. s

Other media competitors are already building scale that way, including Disney (DIS), which is buying most of 21st Century Fox (FOXA), and AT&T (T), which closed a deal for Time Warner earlier this summer. (As a result of that deal, AT&T now owns CNN.)

Regardless of the outcome, many analysts see Moonves as a risk �� it's just a matter of how he is replaced.

Creutz posed what he called the company's "least bad solution" in his analyst note: Replace Moonves with COO Joe Ianniello, who has been the chief's preferred choice as a successor.

But Wieser noted that the problems that have been reported in the press were alleged to have been systemic.

"It's a Les Moonves problem. It's a board problem," he said. Short of a sweeping change, like merging again with Viacom, he said, it's "hard to imagine any other outcome."