GovernmentExecutive.com

ksaldarini@govexec.com

Reduced prescription drug benefits for some federal retirees are accompanying recent premium increases in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.

Six of the seven fee-for-service plans in the FEHBP - in which both current and retired federal employees participate - will begin charging some retired workers co-payments between $5 and $20 for prescription drugs, according to the National Association of Retired Federal Employees.

The change will affect retirees who have Medicare as their primary health care payer and an FEHBP fee-for-service plan as their secondary payer.

In September, the Office of Personnel Management announced that health insurance premiums for federal employees and retirees will rise an average of 9.3 percent in 2000.

NARFE president Frank G. Atwater said the reduced prescription benefits will "place a serious financial strain on hundreds of thousands of federal retirees and survivors who are struggling to make ends meet anyway."

According to health insurance companies, escalating costs of prescription drugs have forced reduced benefits.

"Increasingly, new prescriptions are being used as an alternative to other methods of treatment. When the new drugs are approved, the manufacturers can, and frequently do, dispense these medications at a high cost to the insurer," the American Postal Workers Union plan responded when asked by NARFE to justify its premium increases.