A lot of employee health plans choose to have their open enrollment for health insurance during the fall of every year. That means, for many Americans, it’s just about time to either stick to your same old plan with no changes, make some adjustments to the current health care plan, or switch your coverage to another health insurance offering.

I know when I got a peek at the new coverage I use this year I was pretty shocked. As has been the case for just about the last ten years that I can remember, health insurance premiums and deductibles are up while coverage is cut a bit here and there. Sometimes these changes are pretty mild and, besides the price, have little affect to me or my policy, but other times they directly influence the health care choice I can make in the coming year.

Marketwatch.com recently had an article on this very subject, pointing out it’s a good idea to take a few hours this time of year and look carefully at your employer’s health care coverage. Sometimes it makes good sense to look at the details and see if can elect to change some of the coverages in your health insurance policy. For example, some employers will offer a choice between different levels of coverage which might be two or three different PPO plans. Another place to look at is with a health-savings account, or HSA, where you can put some money aside for health expenses while taking advantage of the tax benefits of this account. In this case the article mentions that some people “would do better to take a plan that has more cost-sharing at the time you use the service and less cost-sharing through the premium.”

There is certainly lots to think about when it comes to health insurance this year. The one thing we can be sure of is that the cost of health insurance is not going down anytime soon. What you can do, though, is learn about your employer’s health care plan in order to see if there are some smart ways to save you money this coming year on health care insurance.