Expert's View

When I’m not sitting at my computer turning out work, I enjoy trolling through agency websites and finding out what government leaders have to say. Sometimes I find interesting nuggets of information in their press releases. However, more often than not I find them in their testimony to Congress.

On August 2, Linda M. Springer, director of the Office of Personnel Management, testified before the House subcommittee on the federal workforce. Her topic was “Federal Benefits: Are We Meeting Expectations.” While I could dwell on the results of OPM’s 2006 Federal Benefits Survey, which showed that employee satisfaction has gone up several points since 2004, I’d rather skip ahead and pass on a few tidbits that may nourish your need for interesting facts.

One that caught my eye – and surprised me – was that the number of CSRS employees has fallen to 650,000 and that FERS employees now total over 2 million (that counts both executive branch and postal employees). Less surprising – but still interesting – was that CSRS benefits were paid to almost 1.6 million retirees and over 600,000 survivors; and FERS benefits were paid to about 230,000 retirees and over 22,000 survivors. The total outlay for those retirement benefits in 2006 was $57 billion. The good news is that the fund from which those payments were made is very healthy. It has around $700 billion in assets.

On the Federal Employees’ Group Life Insurance program front, $2.3 billion was paid out in 2006 to settle around 90,000 claims. That struck me as a lot of money for a modest number of claims until I did the arithmetic. It only amounted to an average payment of around $25,500 per claim. What that suggested was that a large number of those payouts were for retirees who only had FEGLI Basic insurance when they retired and elected the 75 percent reduction.

I’ll only touch on a few Federal Employees Health Benefits program facts because most of you are looking to the future and not the past. However, Springer’s testimony reminded me that the average premium increase in 2007 was only 1.8 percent, with 63 percent of enrollees having no increase in their premiums with 15 percent seeing one of less than 5 percent. Not mentioned were the remaining 22 percent, some of whom may have gone into cardiac arrest when they saw how high their premiums had gone.

There are over 215,000 employees and retirees enrolled in the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program, more than 200,000 in health care flexible spending accounts, another 30,000 in dependent care accounts, and some 400,000 in the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program.