The Office of Personnel Management today announced that health care premiums for federal employees and retirees will increase by 3.8 percent for non-postal employees, a sharp reduction from the 7.3 percent average increase that hit premiums last year.
Enrollees with self-only coverage will pay $2.32 more on average per bi-weekly pay period. Those with family coverage will pay $6.18 more on average.
And premiums for the most popular plan in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) — the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Standard Option — will actually drop slightly: Enrollees with self-only coverage will pay 81 cents less per biweekly pay period while enrollees having family coverage will pay 72 cents less than they do currently.
There are no significant benefit changes for 2012.
Look here for more details on the rate changes for 2012.
5 Comments
Maybe I’m being picky, but… every year the health insurance primiums go up, sometimes more sometimes less. Now, if they were to DROP instead of rising, that would be news!
So, this year premiums wernt up once again, and what headline do we get? “Growth in health primiums slows dramatically” What?
Am I being too picky? Or is there some kind of editorial bias in operation here?
You’re not being picky. Your right health insurance has gone up every year. However I do see they mentioned that the Blue Cross plan will actually go down a few cents a PP. I guess it is up to the individual to evaluate what is best and switch. I switched 2 years ago from BC standard to basic and saved more than a third on premiums. It fit my situation and I retired and have been happy with the switch.
The Middle Class takes it in the butt yet again. When is our bailout?
This is BS. The premium for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Basic increased by 7.5%! OPM should not be patting themselves on the back.
I agree with the comments above…this is NOT news because the premiums go up every year! Worse this year due to the pay freeze. So now I suppose we should be grateful to get LESS of a pay cut because they didn’t go up too much?