For Your Benefit

The Consumers’ CHECKBOOK Guide and FEHBP Open Season

Hosts Bob Leins, CPA®, and Tammy Flanagan, Senior Benefits Director NITP, welcome insurance expert and author Walton Francis and his colleague Kevin Moss to ta...

November 14, 2023 11:58 am

2 min read

November 20, 2023 on ForYourBenefit, our hosts Bob Leins, CPA®, and Tammy Flanagan, Senior Benefits Director NITP, welcome insurance expert and author Walton Francis and his colleague Kevin Moss to talk about FEHBP Open Season. The Consumers’ CHECKBOOK Guide shows that most families can save $2,000 or more by selecting better plan choices.

Francis and Moss are the principal authors of both online and print versions of Consumers’ CHECKBOOK Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees. The Guide gives you vital insurance information that you cannot get from any other source. It tells you how much money you can save by changing – or by staying in – your health insurance plan and summarizes thousands of facts about the plans to simplify your choice.

At the Guide’s website, www.guidetohealthplans.org, you can check to see if your agency has purchased access to the Guide for you.

It rates about 160 health insurance plans available to Federal employees and retirees, including about 20 national plans, and about 140 health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and other local plan options, including two dozen Consumer-Driven and High Deductible plan options. The Guide rates not only regular insurance plans open to both employees and annuitants, but also about 40 plans open only to annuitants on Medicare that provide special Medicare benefits, pay most or all of the Part B premium, or both. Its ratings of plan costs take into account premiums, catastrophic limits, and estimates of likely out-of-pocket costs for medical expenses of every kind.

The Guide compares plans for insurance value in dealing with unforeseen medical expenses, not just for the routine costs you can predict.

It rates dental and vision plans as well. It provides dollar estimates of likely dental costs, taking into account both premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. It compares dental coverage in all plans, not just stand-alone plans.

For questions or comments, email us in advance at ForYourBenefit@nitpinc.com