It’s that time of year - open enrollment for your employment benefits. It’s time to determine if you want to stick with your current health insurance 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 or read the information online. Too many employees do nothing, allowing their employers to choose for them, typically signing them up for what they had the previous year. Only 40 percent of employees actively make a decision about open enrollment choices, even if they choose to keep everything they had the year before, according to Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting company. But do nothing and you may end up with no health coverage, said Sara Taylor, Hewitt’s health 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, Taylor said.
If you don’t take the time to read through your benefits package, you might miss changes. You may find your employer has reduced the number of health plan options. 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.
Here are some tips from me and Hewitt to help you:
■ Don’t assume you will be put back into the same coverage you had last year. Eight percent of employers move employees who do not make an active decision to the highest benefit coverage levels, Hewitt found. And 10 percent don’t sign him or her up for any coverage.
■ Give your health plan a check-up. What you had last year might not exist this year. Also, it’s important to know which parts of your coverage worked for you or your family. A few questions you might want to ask yourself: How much did you spend on copayments and out-of-pocket costs last year? Are your doctors still covered? Did you start seeing any new doctors?
■ Investigate other options. Plans change for the better and for the worse. For example, because of premium increases, many companies are dropping less efficient HMOs and adding other networks. If you don’t look carefully, you may miss that your employer has ejected your plan.
Study your enrollment materials. You shouldn’t put it off.
Michelle Singletary is a columnist for The Washington Post. 
