FEHB, Parental Leave Proposals Repeated

The budget plan contains several benefit proposals raised in past years but that haven’t cleared Congress. One would create six weeks of paid parental leave for the birth, adoption or foster placement of a child, and also would expand the situations in which employees can take sick leave to care for a new child. That would build on policies announced last year generally requiring agencies to advance sick leave on an employee’s request for certain child-related purposes. Also repeated were proposals to expand the types of plans allowed in the FEHB and to have the government negotiate directly for prescription drugs, rather than having carriers make their own arrangements. Another proposal would allow plans to charge higher premiums for the same coverage to enrollees who use tobacco or who don’t participate in certain wellness programs. That proposal has never been well defined, leaving questions about what level of tobacco use, if any, would be allowable and what standards would be used to determine what wellness program is appropriate for an individual and how compliance would be judged. One new provision regarding FEHB in the budget would “extend temporary health benefit coverage to infants born to dependent daughters of FEHB participants for 30 days.”