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Arizona employers are seeking to tame rising benefits costs by steering employees to high-deductible health insurance plans, a new survey shows. (Alltucker, 11/19)

Newer-style health insurance plans, with lower premiums but high deductibles, are forcing more Kansas City area employees to think twice about the health care dollars they spend. A survey released Wednesday showed that a lot more area employers are offering the new plans as the latest hope to control health care benefit costs. The annual National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans, by the Mercer professional services company, also found that those costs rose 5.4 percent this year. (Stafford, 11/19)

Employers who provide health insurance to their workers are seeing an 8 percent price increase for 2015, but a stunning 92 percent of large employers surveyed in Colorado plan to keep offering coverage. (Kerwin McCrimmon, 11/19)