Federal Employees Health Benefits Program
Every hear of It? me either? sounds like a pretty good deal to me, check it out, but before you do ask yourself why? Why is the government not offering its citizens something similiar? What? are we not good enough for your plan? We not make enough money? have too many kids? tell us please what it is!
In 2010 about 250 plans participate in the program.[4] About 20 plans are nationwide or almost nationwide, such as the ones offered by some employee unions such as the National Association of Letter Carriers, by some employee associations, and by national insurance companies such as AETNA and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association on behalf of its member companies. There are about 230 locally available plans, almost all HMOs. The FEHB program is open to all federal employees, including members of United States Congress. The FEBHP's cost is about $40 billion in 2010, including both premiums and out-of-pocket costs. It enrolls about 4 million employees and annuitants and, with their dependents, 8 million persons in total. While its enrollment is about one-fifth that of the nation's largest health insurance program, Medicare, it spends less than one-tenth as much because most enrollees are below age 65 and cost far less on average than the elderly and disabled who constitute Medicare's enrollees.
and if that is not enough to fry your bacon check out this neat little bit of information of government has convientaly forgotten to tell us about!
Premiums vary from plan to plan and are paid in part by the employer (the U. S. government agency that the employee works for or, for annuitants, OPM) and the remainder by the employee. The employer pays an amount up to 72 percent of the average plan premium for self-only or family coverage (not to exceed 75 percent of the premium for the selected plan), and the employee pays the rest. This dollar amount is recalculated each year as health care costs and plans' premiums increase. Certain employees (such as postal workers) have a higher portion of their premiums paid as the result of collective bargaining agreements. The precise percentage of the average paid by the employer is relative unimportant to the design of this program and has changed over time to become more generous. What is important that it is a "capped premium" design, in which the entire marginal cost of joining a plan with a premium near, at, or above the all-plan average is borne by the enrollee. In other words, enrollees pay the entire cost of their costly choices, but reap rewards if they make frugal choices. This creates constant pressure on the plans, since to attract enrollees they must hold down costs, while balancing this incentive against benefit offerings and customer service, to reach a position that will maximize their enrollment revenues and profits. This feature of the program is arguably its greatest strength and the primary reason that one expert summarized it has having "outperformed Medicare every which way--in containment of costs both to consumers and to the government, in benefit and product innovation and modernization, and in consumer satisfaction," decade after decade.[3]
Wow our government has had a better solution than Medicare and kept it from us all the years! are you as pissed off as I am?
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