Having health insurance is great. Not having it is terrible. Between the two extremes are a lot of gray areas, paperwork and a host of confusing medical and legal terms.

If you're lucky, you'll have some choices when it comes to health insurance. "Very few people are going to have a choice or any significant amount of choice," says Paul Fronstin, director of the health research and education program for the Employee Benefit Research Institute. "Your choice may be whether to take your own employer's health plan or get something else."

Your employer may offer several plans. Or you may be offered coverage by both your job and that of your spouse. You might also have some flexibility in various limits and deductibles in the plan you select.

Evaluating the plan

"Employers and insurance companies have found it makes more sense to tinker with cost sharing when people need health care," says Fronstin. That means that charges for co-pay, office visits, drugs and deductibles are typically where consumers will feel the health cost pinch the most.

One example: the average preferred provider organization, or PPO, deductible was $287 in 2004, but increased to $323 in 2005, according to EBRI statistics.

That could impact you if you're lucky enough to be choosing between plans at two different companies.

"Increasingly employers are making changes to their health insurance plans that shift more of the cost to the employees and dependents," says Robert Hoyt, past president of the American Risk and Insurance Association and head of the risk management and insurance program at the University of Georgia.

But "not all employers are making these changes at the same pace," he says. So that's something to consider carefully as you make your choices.

Your needs should dictate your coverage.

If you usually spend very little on health care, a high-deductible policy coupled with a health savings account for out-of-pocket costs might be a good option. But "for people who are not always healthy or who tend to be sicker, it's not a good deal," says Bill Vaughan, a senior policy analyst at Consumers Union, the publishers of Consumer Reports magazine.