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Return to Article: Ensuring a Healthy Retirement

• 41290
  

  Tammy, please explore what is required for a federal employee's spouse to continue health insurance coverage if the employee dies prior to retirement. This situation came up in my office today and I don't think it's discussed enough. If a federal employee has 10 years of service, has self-only FEHB and dies, can his spouse have FEHB coverage after his death (even though she was not covered while he was employed?) Also, if an employee with self-and-family FEHB who has 18 months of service dies, is the spouse entitled to continued FEHB coverage? Please cover this in detail. Much appreciated!

  C. P. Thompson Posted January 10, 2008 5:44 PM
• 17490
  

  Hey taxpayer, pay attention, the article is about after retirement.

  GovExec.com reader Posted June 22, 2006 10:30 AM
• 17468
  

  Once again "Taxpayer" has it wrong. Most retirees are down to themselves and their spouse when they retire. Therefore their "family" is self plus one. It doesn't matter how many children they had during their working years, once they reach retirement, there's usually no need for the "family" level of insurance when "self + 1" will be more than adequate.

  GovExec.com reader Posted June 21, 2006 10:22 AM
• 17425
  

  When I built a health program at one of my companies I build health premiums to reflect the number in the family. It is not self plus one, it is self plus many. We had some employees that had nine dependents. Why should the rest of the employees subsidize the desire by some to have many? The more dependents the greater the exposure for claims. Our premium for health care (this was over a decade ago) increased by $50 for each dependent after the first. Likewise, the deductible was $100 per person with no maximum for the family. Each individual was treated the same for deductible regardless of what others had achieved.

  Health insurance should be by individual and not by married unit or "family."

  Taxpayer Posted June 20, 2006 7:27 AM
• 17411
  

  I did all the correct procedures in retirement; however, I did not have a healthy retirement. I had a death sentence! I retired in January 2006 and have only received partial payment due to mistakes of the IRS. I have gone in debt, have lots of pain and suffering to try and get everything done. I even needed to withdraw partial payment of my Thrift and again due to an error of Thrift and IRS, it is delayed. I called and they say they are sorry but it will be another seven to 10 days. I think six months for a person to retire and not able to get all their benefits is sad. Also, if I owed the IRS there would be penalty and compounded interest due them!

  Myra Simmons Posted June 19, 2006 3:17 PM
• 17403
  

  After death of federal employee, does the federal employee survivor pay "self only" rate or "self and family" rate if they elect to continue coverage?

  Dave Roha Posted June 19, 2006 11:53 AM
• 17386
  

  You are not alone in wishing for self + one health coverage. It appears that OPM will be making a step in that direction this coming open season (2006) by offering dental/vision coverage with self + one option as well as self only and self and family. One argument for not offering self + one FEHB has been that the more categories that FEHB is filtered into, the more disparity there will be in the premiums. For example, if the retirees were placed in a different "price" category from the employees, then the retirees would be paying a higher share of the cost. Even though most federal retirees qualify for Medicare at age 65, retirees as a group, have the most medical expenses (prescriptions as well as inpatient and outpatient care) compared to the whole group of active employees. Last I checked, there were about 1,000 retirees over older than 100!

  Tammy Flanagan Posted June 17, 2006 8:24 AM
• 17377
  

  Your article didn't mention that federal employees who are injured and have to go on federal disability retirement can also continue to be covered by the FEHB program as long as they were on it at the time they became unable to work.

  But, then, you really have avoided mentioning anything about planning for disability retirement in case a federal worker needs it or federal employee's workers compensation. Being prepared for that is probably more important than for normal retirement because a federal employee might need it at any time during their career only to find out that they may be financially destroyed while trying to get their benefits.

  Robert M. Posted June 16, 2006 1:36 PM
• 17371
  

  In speaking of FEHB, I would like to know why there are only two categories for health insurance - self and self and family?

  I spent 30 years in the private sector before coming to the government and I was employed by several different companies during that time, both large and small enterprises. In every instance, employees had a choice of self, family or self + one. This third category covered newly married couples, childless couples and retired "empty nesters."

  Isn't this a much fairer method then having self and self and family only? Why should childless couples pay premiums that cover the cost to the insurance companies of insuring families with 3, 4, 5 or more family members?

  The reason cannot be to keep the premiums low, as I have compared our rates with private companies' health insurance rates and I don't see much difference.

  GovExec.com reader Posted June 16, 2006 8:29 AM