Federal Health Insurance Benefits To Go Up By 8 Percent

Federal Health Insurance Benefits To Go Up By 8 Percent in Group Health Insurance

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, group health insurance premiums for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program will go up by an average of 8 percent for 2009, reported the Washington Post.

For some federal employees, premiums will go up by as much as 13 percent, wrote the Post article.

Why such big premium increases?

Nancy Kichak, the associate director for strategic human resources policy in the Office of Personnel Management, pointed blame to technology and medical inflation. Others blamed a slow movement to generic drugs by policyholders.

Either way, it wasn’t good news for federal employees.

“These premium increases keep eating into the wallets of federal employees. Something has to be done to keep these increases in check,” said president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, Richard N. Brown.

This could be bad news for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s health insurance plan. Senator Obama would open up the federal health plan to all Americans.

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