“Transparency” and “choice” are keywords associated with health plan consumers these days. But there’s no guarantee those key words will lead to the keyword 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 their costs, and even increased them a bit.

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