Make your health benefits a priority

Published online on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009

It's that time of year -- open enrollment for your employment benefits package.

It's time to determine if you want to stick with your current health insurance plan or switch. You may have to decide about your employer-provided life insurance or disability insurance or whether to sign up for legal or financial planning services.

One thing you need to do for sure -- open the documents when they arrive in the mail or read the information online. It's a pain, I know, but too many employees do nothing at all, allowing their employers to choose for them, typically signing them up for what they had the previous year.

Only 40% of employees actively make a decision about their open enrollment choices, even if they choose to keep everything they had the year before, according to Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting and outsourcing company. This inertia has roughly remained the same compared with previous years. But do nothing and you may end up with no health coverage, said Sara Taylor, Hewitt's health and welfare strategy leader.

"We are seeing a trend of more and more employers who are saying if you do nothing, I'm going to change what you have and either choose for you or provide no coverage," she said.

Employers who make the choice for their employees may give them a grace period to again respond. But after that, workers may be stuck with the previous year's choices, Taylor said.

Who knows what will happen with the health-care reform effort now being debated in Congress? But this we do know: Health-care coverage for many workers is going to cost more in 2010, no matter what. You can't afford to ignore your open enrollment package.

More than four in 10 employers said they are raising deductibles, co-payments and co-insurance, according to another open enrollment survey conducted by the consulting firm Watson Wyatt.

Average health-care premiums are expected to rise to $9,120 next year, up from $8,607 in 2009, according to Hewitt. Increasingly, employers are shifting more of that cost onto their employees -- including their share of premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, which are expected to rise to $4,023, up from $3,656 in 2009.

If you don't take the time to read through your benefits package, you might miss some important changes. You may find that your employer has reduced the number of health plan options offered. And this means you might have to switch physicians or pay higher out-of-network costs to keep the doctors you like.

Procrastinate and you could also miss some perks.

Watson Wyatt found employers are offering gift cards, cash and discounted premiums to workers and, in some cases, their spouses for undergoing a health risk assessment or participating in smoking cessation, weight management or fitness programs.

Hewitt research shows that most companies offer tools to help you go through your health-care claims from the past year.

With this information, you can then figure out which plan going forward is best.