Senate Committee Advances NARFE-Supported Bipartisan Legislation

MYTH: The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022 will force current postal retirees into Medicare Part B.

REALITY: Per the law’s language, anyone who is a postal annuitant as of January 1, 2025, is not required to add Medicare Part B as a condition of being in the Postal Service Health Benefits (PSHB) program. Postal employees who are at least age 64 as of January 1, 2025, are also not required to enroll in Medicare Part B to be in PSHB. For those eligible, the legislation would offer a special enrollment period to enroll in Part B, but taking the coverage would remain a choice, not a requirement.

NARFE is also pleased with included provisions to repeal the burdensome mandate to prefund future postal retiree health benefits and the bill’s codification of mail delivery at six days per week.

H.R. 3076 will bring financial relief to the Postal Service, improving the agency’s ability to remain a public entity providing a crucial service to the American people while simultaneously protecting the earned health benefits of postal and federal workers and retirees.

The bill creates a new Postal Service Health Benefits (PSHB) program within FEHB beginning in January 2025. Just like FEHB, the PSHB will be operated by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and plans will be required to provide “equivalent . . . benefits and cost-sharing requirements” as provided by each carrier’s FEHB plans, except as needed to integrate with Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage. Part D integration will allow PSHB plans to offer similar or better prescription drug coverage while providing a source of cost savings for the PSHB plans that will help reduce premiums, all else equal.

Actuarial analysis of the new PSHB program found that it should lower average costs of coverage, and therefore plan premiums, for both PSHB and FEHB program plans, benefitting postal and nonpostal enrollees. As such, PSHB plans should provide the same coverage to postal employees and retirees, but with lower premiums.

—BY JOHN ROBERT AYERS, POLICY AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT

On February 2, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) favorably reported two NARFE-endorsed bills to the full Senate—the Honoring Civil Servants Killed in the Line of Duty Act, S. 3487, and the Chance to Compete Act, S.3423. Both bills were authored by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ, and introduced with bipartisan support.

The Honoring Civil Servants Killed in the Line of Duty Act was introduced in the Senate on January 12, 2022. The bill would increase compensation paid to survivors of federal employees who have died in the line of duty from $10,000 to $100,000, bringing it more in line with benefits for federal civilian employees killed abroad. It would also increase the government’s payment for funeral expenses from $800 to $8,800, updating the figure for the first time since the 1960s. The bill specifies that benefit amounts will be adjusted annually to keep pace with increases in the cost of living.

The Chance to Compete Act was introduced in the Senate on December 16, 2021. This bill would change how federal agencies evaluate job applicants and make the federal hiring process more efficient. It would improve the ability of agencies to share assessments, allow subject matter experts to serve as interviewers, and focus assessments on candidates’ ability to perform the actual job rather than self-ratings and college degrees.

—BY JOHN ROBERT AYERS, POLICY AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT