At the end of every year, most employees of large companies have a small window of time to update or modify their health insurance coverage. Make sure you don’t ignore this opportunity to take advantage of new annual health care open enrollment options before the deadline passes!

One good reason to set aside some time to at least LOOK at the new (and old) health insurance rules and regs is that many companies automatically place employees who fail to fill out required paperwork into an undesireable default plan. And chances are this default plan does not offer the same level of coverage as your current plan. Also, you really should take another look at the options you chose last year – chances are that something has changed and you could be getting more out of your benefits.

The idea behind any wise insurance choice should be to get the highest amount of coverage for the lowest cost to you! The things to look closely at are:

Annual out of pocket costs

Coverage Amounts

Premiums

Possible out of pocket expenses

You definitely want to keep enough coverage to avoid financial disaster if some unlikely unfortunate medical issue comes up.

While your packet of insurance info can seem impersonal at best - and downright drool inducing at worst – it’s important to go through it once a year. Just like taxes, dealing with mundane insurance costs correctly can mean the difference between saving a few hundred dollars, and saving a few thousand dollars!