Free tool now available for Open Season decision-making

With premium increases and a choice of more than 20 plans, the average federal employee is feeling a little overwhelmed this Open Season.

Asparity Decision Solutions has a toolbox for feds called PlanSmartChoice to help.

According to their press release, federal employees can use the selection tools to:

• Learn which medical plan best meets their personal needs and financial circumstances.

• Estimate their total health care costs based on their own need for medical services.

• Determine how much to set aside in flexible spending accounts or health savings accounts.

• Compare detailed benefits across their medical, dental, and vision plan options.

For example, Asparity president and CEO Colleen Murphy, tells FederalNewsRadio that while OPM has a comparison tool, PlanSmartChoice offers a greater range of options.

The medical cost calculator is something that, on average, federal employees run two to three scenarios with different estimates of their medical usage and helps them understand what their out of pocket expenses are going to be for all of the options that they have.

Also available is a preference tool which ranks the plans. "If you've got 21 medical options," said Murphy, "it can be pretty overwhelming even to do a side by side comparison."

The fortunate part about the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program in Murphy's estimation, "is all of the plans have excellent reputations. The individual plans may or may not meet your needs, but chances are, you're not going to run into a problem in terms of having inadequate coverage."

While you really can't go too far wrong, Murphy told the Federal Drive that after using PlanSmartChoice, about 70% of feds wind up switching plans.

The reality about tools like PlanSmartChoice is, you may end up staying in the plan you're currently in, buy you're going to feel, because you've spent 10 or 15 minutes doing some comparison shopping, that you're much more confident about the choice that you've made.

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