Consumers Union analyzes the rankings of about 800 private, Medicare and Medicaid plans from the National Committee for Quality Assurance in the November issue of Consumer Reports Magazine and finds that small plans can be beautiful.
The biggest national insurers and the Blues run 75% of the 390 private plans with rankings but only 36% of the NCQA's 50 highest-ranked plans.
Kaiser Permanente is the big plan that does best in terms of rankings, and New England is the region that tends to do the best.