Under a proposed Office of Personnel Management (OPM) rule, members of Congress and their aides who are required to get coverage from health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act no longer would be eligible for Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) coverage when they retire.
They’d be eligible to carry their exchange coverage into retirement, but the law also means members and Hill staff will be moving into a marketplace where older customers can be charged three times as much as younger customers for the same coverage. That’s not the case now with the federal benefits program, which doesn’t vary coverage costs based on the enrollee’s age.
The proposed OPM rule would require the federal government to pay the lion’s share of premium payments for members of Hill staff, as it does now when they are in FEHBP. That should relieve Hill staff of a great deal of worry since many feared they’d lose their current federal contribution for coverage.
Joel Ario, a consultant in private industry who oversaw exchange development early in the Obama Administration, predicts OPM will aim to replicate current premium charges as much as possible, even though that could leave Hill staff better off than workers generally, possibly creating political problems, the newsletter
CQ HealthBeat reports.
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Part B News.