It's almost benefit enrollment time!

For most employees who work for large corporations, annual benefit enrollment time is almost here.  Whether you like the benefits you had in the past year or want to make a switch, you can do yourself a favor by doing some preparations now in order to evaluate the packages being offered for next year.

Many benefit enrollment periods offer these items:

• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Tax-advantaged accounts 
• Dependent care flex spending account
• Health care flex spending account for employees without a High Deductible Health Plan
• Health spending account for employees with a High Deductible Health Plan
• Life insurance
• Retirement plans
• And there are many other possible benefits that could be offered.

Take a look at the benefits that you are currently enrolled in and ask yourself if they really met your needs.  For many people, vision or dental insurance isn't worth the premiums paid because the insurance being offered just isn't very good.  For example, if you only wear contacts is it really worth the premium for vision insurance to cover a portion of the cost of the contacts and the contact fitting visit?  Most people would say no. 

Dental insurance sometimes isn't worth the premiums paid either.  True, you never know when a cavity or root canal could hit and you need the insurance.  But did you max out your dental insurance this year and hit the threshold where the insurance company refused to pay any more money?

If you feel like your insurance company isn't working for you, take some time to evaluate the plan in question.  Compare the amount of the premium you are paying from each paycheck for 2015 against how much the insurance company is saving you (either through their "provider discount" or what they paid the provider directly; these amounts should be listed on the Explanation of Benefits that you should have received for every doctor and dentist visit).  If your total premium is close to what insurance is saving you, it could be worth calling your provider(s) directly and asking them what they would charge you if you did not have insurance and were paying them out of pocket.  You may be surprised to find that you can get the services you need during a typical year for less than the total annual premium of the insurance.

The other alternative would be to enroll in an insurance plan that was considered a "better" plan, but those plans usually charge a higher premium directly from your paycheck.  Again, you need to weigh the annual cost of the premium against the amount the insurance plan is saving you.  Unfortunately many times you can't find out details about a different plan unless you are actually enrolled in the plan, so you may have to take the enrollment literature and make some assumptions.

Let's take dental insurance as an example.  The first step in this process is to locate all of the Explanation of Benefits (these should be mailed to you or available electronically through your insurance company's website) for 2015 for you or your family (whoever is covered through the premium that you pay).  For each visit, look at how the insurance is being calculated.  If you only went to the dentist twice during the year (for two cleanings), one Explanation of Benefits could look like this (in summary):

• Total charges submitted by provider = $187 
• Amount covered by plan = $187 (cleanings are covered at 100%)
• Amount you owe provider = $0

So, over the course of a year if you have excellent dental health the insurance company would be paying $374 total on your behalf for two cleanings.  Compare that amount to how much you are paying for the entire year for dental premiums from your paycheck.  In this example, an individual is paying $41 a month ($492 a year) for this insurance.  Is the premium paid worth the insurance?  In this case, it is not since the $492 premium paid during the year far exceeds the $374 amount the insurance company is paying to the provider.  Of course, this example works since the individual in question has good dental health with no issues and only needs two cleanings a year.  Also, if you are considering dropping the insurance you may want to call your provider and ask how much a cleaning would cost without insurance to make sure they would not charge you more than what is listed on the Explanation of Benefits.  This is a real-life example from the company that I work for.

If you are on the fence about your dental or vision plan, take a little time to evaluate if your insurance really is working for you.