Search results for fehb plan coverage features

167 articles found

• Should I suspend FEHB coverage and just have Medicare Advantage?

  If you join a commercial MA plan, not FEHB Medicare Advantage plans, you can temporarily suspend your FEHB enrollment and stop paying two sets of premiums. Under the suspend option, you pay the Part

• Advice for Persons Who Pay Full FEHB Premiums

  The FEHB program also provides coverage for former spouses, former employees, children turning age 26, and others. In each of these cases, the covered enrollee must pay the full premium without

• Expect to see Improved Fertility Coverage from FEHB Plans in 2024

  OPM released their annual carrier call letter that outlines the goals and initiatives federal employees can see from FEHB plans in 2024. One of the biggest changes is fertility coverage. From the OPM

• How the FEHB Program Works

  The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB) is an unconventional government program. Instead of giving you one "take it or leave it" choice, the government authorizes plans to compete for

• Big Changes in How Federal Annuitants Receive Prescription Drug Benefits in 2024 and Beyond

  Major Medicare Part D reforms were enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). Some of the legislation’s provisions seek to lower prescription drug costs for both Medicare beneficiaries and

• How to Coordinate a FEHB Plan with Other Insurance

  You cannot use our cost rankings directly if you have health insurance coverage from another source. The best FEHB plan for you depends on the cost and benefit structure of the other plan, though

• What the End of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Means for FEHB Coverage

  On May 11, 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE). As a result, some FEHB benefit provisions enacted by OPM will change going forward. OPM

• Should Federal Annuitants Stay Enrolled in the FEHB program after Age 65?

  You could drop FEHB coverage once you enroll in Parts A and B. But this would be a bad decision. Medicare Part B requires you to pay 20 percent of the cost of doctors’ fees, and deductibles, with no

• How Much Money Can I Save by Switching FEHB Plans?

  Whether your family's circumstances are "average" or unusual, some HMOs, some national plans such as Blue Cross Basic and GEHA Standard option, and several High-Deductible plans offer big savings

• Should I Join an HMO in the FEHB Program?

  HMO plans provide not just insurance, but also a different approach to health care delivery from traditional fee-for-service medicine. Therefore, although cost and benefit comparisons are the key

• How to Get FEHB Plan Information

  The OPM website has plan brochures and a great deal of other useful information. There are three additional ways to get brochures: Attend health fairs Call the plan Visit the plan website You change

• FEHB Plan Quality

  For traditional fee-for-service insurance plans, service quality used to be a minor issue. The main service concerns were how easily you could get help from plan representatives regarding coverage

• Are High Deductible Health Plans the Right FEHB Plan Type for You?

  For most federal employees, High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) will be the cheapest FEHB plan type. Here’s how they work. HDHP Overview HDHPs have much higher deductibles than traditional HMO and

• How to Balance Risk When Choosing a FEHB Plan

  Since you do not know in advance how high your medical bills will be, there is no way to know which plan will leave you with the lowest total cost. You must gamble just as you do with any insurance,

• What You Need to Know About Dental Care in the FEHB Program

  Plans' dental benefits differ widely in details, and many of the brochures use technical terminology such as "gingival" (gum, in English), "alveolar" (the part of the jawbone that holds teeth in

• FEHB Plan Benefits

  I need good psychiatric benefits. What plan is best? The mental health parity requirement—which theoretically allows unlimited mental health services at the same cost as physical health

• FEHB Plan Brochures

  You can download PDF copies of plan brochures at the Checkbook, OPM, and plan websites, and either use them online or as print copies. Plan brochures are necessary to determine what benefits each

• How to Choose the Best FEHB Plan For You and Your Family

  There are three important steps to follow to narrow down the selection of plans: Use the Guide's yearly cost comparisons, which are personalized based on the information you tell us, to find the

• Should I Use Non-Preferred Providers With My FEHB Plan?

  You face far higher costs if you use non-preferred providers in most plans, though many plans remove this cost if you have Medicare Parts A & B. Plans not only charge you more for deductibles,

• How to Save Money on FEHB Coverage and Healthcare Costs

  With the average enrollee share of FEHB premium increasing 7.7% next year, most federal employees will pay more for health insurance in 2024. We’ll analyze this premium hike and walk you through

• FEHB Plan Accreditation

  We report whether or not plans are accredited by NCQA, URAC, or AAAHC. These organizations have procedures to determine whether plans meet the organizations accreditation standards. The standards

• Should I Use Preferred Providers With My FEHB Plan?

  We rate plan costs based on the assumption that you will always or almost always want to use preferred providers, also known as staying in network. Your cost is always lower, usually far lower, when

• FEHB & Medicare Part D

  The Medicare Part D prescription drug program benefits millions of Americans. It fills a major hole in Medicare that lasted 50 years. But, historically, it would rarely benefit federal retirees who

• 13 FEHB Open Season Tips

  Getting "Free" Health Insurance—Some Consumer-Driven and High Deductible FEHB plans provide you a savings account larger than your actual premium cost after taxes. You can end the year with more

• Types of FEHB Plans

  Plans are of three main types: Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) and Fee-for-Service (FFS) plans, High Deductible (HDHP) and Consumer-Driven (CDHP) plans Health Maintenance Organization (HMO)

• Customer Satisfaction Ratings of FEHB Plans

  Our Guide shows plan-by-plan customer satisfaction ratings reported by OPM. These ratings come from a 2023 survey in which a standardized questionnaire was sent to a sample of each plan’s members.

• FEHB Plan Catastrophic Limits

  The most important reason for buying health insurance is to protect you against financial catastrophe. You may, therefore, wish to approach plan selection by comparing plans based on potential

• Weight Loss Drug Coverage from FEHB Plans and Medicare

  Weight-loss drug popularity has skyrocketed. Between 2020 to 2022, the number of prescriptions has risen to around 9 million in the U.S. With celebrity attention, positive clinical trials, and even

• What's New in FEHB for 2024

  Every year it’s important to review what’s new in FEHB. As in previous years, there are significant premium, benefit, and plan availability changes that will affect both active and retired federal

• Are Consumer Driven Health Plans the Right FEHB Plan Type for You?

  Consumer Driven Health Plans (CDHPs) have been around for a while, but we still get a lot of questions about them. Here’s why they’re one of the lowest-cost plans in FEHB. How CDHPs work CDHPs have

• FEHB Tax Savings for Federal Employees

  There are major tax advantages for health insurance. The employer share of health insurance—paid by agencies for employees and by OPM for retirees—is part of employee compensation but by law is

• What Federal Annuitants Need to Know about Medicare Part D for 2024

  Federal annuitants will have higher healthcare costs in 2024. The enrollee share for FEHB premiums is rising 7.7%, and the standard Medicare Part B premium is increasing 5.9%, or $9.80, to

• Why Every Federal Employee Should Consider a Health Savings Account

  High Deductible Health Plans (HDHP), which include Health Savings Accounts (HSA), are one of the cheapest health plan options available to federal employees. With an increase in HSA contributions for

• Should I Join a High Deductible Plan in the FEHB Program?

  Over a dozen national and some local carriers offer High Deductible plans (HDHP), with at least two or three of these plans available to most enrollees. HDHPs offer spectacular savings opportunities

• International Health Coverage

  I am recently retired, looking to select a health plan that will work for my wife and I. Both of us have selected Medicare A and B. The past 10 years we have had our health plan with Kaiser. However

• Our Methods and Data Sources

  We compare plans in terms of their likely dollar cost to you, including both the “for sure” expense of the premium and the out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses you face for costs the plan does not pay. We

• A Closer Look at 2024 FEHB Premiums

  Federal employees and annuitants will, on average, pay 7.7% more in FEHB premiums next year. OPM cites increased cost and use of prescription drugs, emergency room care, and outpatient care as the

• What You Need to Know About Vision Care in the FEHB Program

  All FEHB plans pay for medically necessary care of your eyes, such as cataract surgery. Many pay for annual refractive examinations to determine your prescription for eyeglasses or contact lens, and

• Reasons Why You Should Enroll in Medicare Part B

  The most common question we receive every Open Season from retirees and soon-to-be retirees is whether to take Part B and pay the extra premium. Given that there is a penalty if you delay Part B

• How can Checkbook's Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees help me?

  Checkbook's Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees gives you vital shopping information that you cannot get from any other source. It tells you how much money you can save by changing—or by

• Will My FEHB Plan Pay for That?

  Most plans limit reimbursement for most of the following services. Current employees can cover any of them through a Flexible Spending Account. Dental care—Only some plans cover dental care. We

• Disputed Claims for FEHB Plans

  Along with the customer satisfaction survey results, we have another indicator of service quality for fee-for-service plans. We checked disputed claims on file at OPM. A disputed claim is a case in

• What's a Point of Service FEHB Plan?

  Some HMOs provide a Point of Service (POS) option under which you may, by paying a deductible and coinsurance, use any doctor or hospital. This benefit is essentially identical to the fee-for-service

• Prescription Drug Coverage

  I take a number of prescription drugs and I would like to find out which plan would cost me the least out of pocket cost. Is there a way to do this? Our results comparing plans include substantial

• Maternity Care

  What plan offers the best maternity benefits? Most plans offer low or no cost maternity coverage. Check brochures for this, and check network lists online to make sure you will have a good selection

• How to use Checkbook's Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees

  We prepared the Guide because we know that choosing the right plan can be difficult, even if you have time to read hundreds of pages in plan brochures. The coverage details are hard to understand and

• Deductibles, Copayments, and Coinsurance in the FEHB Program

  You can use cost sharing details to assist you in choosing a plan by pinpointing strengths and weaknesses for items of particular importance. If you are especially concerned about a broad area of

• Dental Care

  I am a new employee and I have the Blue Cross Basic plan. I've reviewed the plan and it seems to cover dental as well as medical. But I have always thought I needed separate dental and vision. Others

• Why FEHB Premiums Vary

  The General Schedule (GS) employee and retiree share of the annual premium varies widely among plans. In national plans it ranges from about $1,400 to almost $4,000 for individuals, and from about

• Reasons Why You Shouldn't Enroll in Medicare Part B

  Here are a few scenarios why retirees should consider not taking Part B. High Income Couples and Individuals that pay IRMAA—If you fall into one of the high-income categories (more than $103,000