Monday Round-up

David Ermer–Federal employment benefits, Mental health care, OPM, U.S. Healthcare–
Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash

For fun, the FEHBlog went down the OPM.gov rabbit hole to find the dates on which the the following year’s FEHB and FEDVIP premiums were announced. Since 2004 (the FEHBlog could not find the 2009 and 2010 press releases), the announcement was made eleven times in September and four times in October. The latest date was October 7 in 2014. Since that date the release dates range from September 28 (in 2015 and 2018) to October 7. So OPM has not set a new record yet.

In this regard, the Society for Human Resources Management reports today that

Employers expect a moderate health plan cost increase next year of 4.4 percent, on average, compared to this year, according to early results from HR consultancy Mercer’s National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans 2020.

The increase, based on 1,113 employer responses since early July, is marginally lower than a recent forecast by the nonprofit Business Group on Health, which in August expected a 5.3 percent increase in health plan premiums for 2021. But Mercer’s projection is within the broad range of 4 percent to 10 percent forecast by consultancy PwC’s Health Research Institute over the summer.

Mercer projects that 2020 will end with a 3.3 percent health benefit cost increase, which is still largely in line with the average annual cost growth over the past several years. Still, health benefit cost growth is now far outpacing the consumer price index and wage growth, both of which have slowed significantly.

The President, who returned to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this evening, signed an executive order on Saturday. The executive order concerns “Saving Lives Through Increased Support For Mental- and Behavioral-Health Needs. It establishes a “Coronavirus Mental Health Working Group (Working Group) is hereby established to facilitate an ‘all-of-government’ response to the mental-health conditions induced or exacerbated by the pandemic, including issues related to suicide prevention. The Working Group will be co-chaired by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, or his designee, and the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, or her designee.”

It’s a bit of surprise to the FEHBlog that as Federal News Network reports the federal government has not yet given affected employees the option to decline the Administration’s temporary payroll tax deferral.