“Transparency” and “choice” are keywords associated withhealth plan consumers thesedays. But there’s no guarantee those key words will lead to thekeyword phrase “lower health plan costs.”

One survey of the employees of two large employers reports that,given transparency and choice, plan members did not reduce theircosts, and even increased thema bit.

As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association,a Harvard-led study of plan member choices showed that whenemployees spent more time reviewing plan options, they did notnecessarily choose a cheaper plan. The studycompared two groups of employees — one with a plan that included aprice transparency/comparison tool, and another that did not.

The end result: The group with the transparency tool at itsdisposal spent slightly more (about $59 per member) on a planin 2012 than in 2011. The control group with no tool spent about$18 more.

However, the study included a big caveat: “Only a smallpercentage of eligible employees” used the tool.

Such studies can offer some value to the overall discussion ofreducing health costs. However, this study’s small focus (employeesof two companies), when it took place (before comparison tools hadtruly entered the health plan lexicon), and the relatively fewfolks who used it, probably suggests that perhaps it could be usedas the starting point for a broader study based upon more recentdata.