It’s that time of year again. Holiday cheer, Christmas shopping in conjunction with raiding the left over Halloween candy isle at the grocery store, and oh yeah, open enrollment for benefits at work. Blehhhh.

That’s probably my least favorite administrative task at work. Pick a health plan. There’s only three, they’re all free, but if you foresee yourself needing this little benefit in fine print, you need the “premier blue” plan, but that comes with an additional $500 deductible, a smaller approved doctors lists…

…and this is where I lose interest.

To its credit, my company spends a lot of time and money making sure I know how to best take advantage of the benefits plan. Seminars for health, dental, vision, employee stock purchase plan, 401(k), pension, flexible spending accounts. You name it, there’s an informative meeting on it.

I don’t mean to belittle the process, it just seems that I spend an awful lot of time trying to determine whether I need to change things up a bit, only to leave them the same.

Ironically, I was browsing through the online Journal this morning and came across an article by Terri Cullen concerning this very subject.

She says that the biggest mistake many employees make is that when faced with a decision on which health plan to pick, they don’t pick any of them. That mistake could leave them with no coverage for an entire year, regardless of the differences in copay.

Incidentally, Cullen mentions that the biggest reason that companies are pushing their employees to be more up to speed on their benefits options is because they’re pushing more of the health care costs on to the employees themselves. Plan deductibles are rising, and many companies are providing a health savings account plan.

I understand that health care costs are rising, and I don’t necessarily expect the employer to absorb all of the cost increases. However, it does force one to look farther out into the future and try to account for events that may ding your wallet, aside from the typical doctors visit or late night trip to the ER for a broken wrist.

An interesting change change of the times indeed, and perhaps more a reason to pay attention in those open-enrollment seminars.

Business, Health and Fitness, Insurance 401(k), bennies, Business, health plans, health savings account, work, work benefits