I have the privilege of meeting with lots and lots of federal employees and retirees, helping them plan their federal retirement. And so naturally, the conversation of
FEHB, is always front and center. And from the outside looking in, you've here, you've heard us say that this is by far the best benefit that you have as a federal employee, and if you meet certain rules, you get to keep it in retirement as well, and some of the highlights of why that is is the government is subsidizing roughly 72% of those premiums, so it is still
even into retirement, a very, very good benefit, right? Now, the 800 pound gorilla, the most common plans that I'm seeing when I'm speaking with federal employees is by far a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan, and that's normally either the basic plan or the standard plan, and so what I thought would be helpful, as I often will get questions related to this in meetings, is to cover some of those highlights, talking about some of those key differences between the standard and the basic plan.
So what I've done is I've pulled from the FEPblue.org website, this two pager, just comparing those different plans. The one thing that I've noticed, and I really haven't seen personally working with federal employees, is that there's another category as well, there's another plan that's offered as well, which is
called the focus plan. So right off the bat, what I'll say is the focus plan is going to be the least cost every two weeks, bi weekly or monthly, then the basic plan would be kind of that mid tier plan, and then the standard plan is going to be the more expensive plan per month or every two weeks that's at a high level, the major difference there you pay more per month for that standard plan than you would for the basic plan, or even the focus plan, and you'll see that here on this, this two
pager, the bi weekly premiums, if we look at self only, if you were self only, and you're in the Blue Cross, Blue Shield focus plan, you're paying $59 every two weeks, if you're in the basic plan, you're gonna pay 113 and if you're in the standard you're paying 174 every two weeks for that standard plan, so the prices go up quite a bit just depending on which
plan that you're in. And then, of course, they have the self plus one, so if you're married or if you've got a self and Family plan as well, you can compare those different plans here. So again, right off the bat, the biggest difference there is going to be the cost, what you actually pay every two weeks for this health insurance. So right off the bat, the cost is going to be the biggest difference that you're going to
see between those different plans. Now I highly encourage you to look through this PDF, maybe you pause the video here, or you go to the website where you can look at the different plans yourself and compare based on how often you're going to the doctors, going to different specialists, chiropractors, if you're starting a family, right, you can compare the different costs on what each of those plans cover. Not going to get into that today, but I'd really encourage you to do that
yourself to see what those major differences are. The most common scenario that I see is that somebody will have a Blue Cross, Blue Shield plan that they've been in for years, and they've just never look at it, and they don't know, you know, let's say that they're in the standard plan, they're paying the most
for their health insurance. They don't know because they haven't really spent the time to compare what the cost would be if they switched to the basic plan, or even the focus plan, so again, highly encourage you to look through this yourself and see, based on your situation, what might make the most sense. But obviously, if you're going to pay less for it every two weeks, that's going to come with a cost if you do need to go for care.
So some of those highlights would be the Blue Cross, Blue Shield basic plan is the only plan that has no deductible, however, that's the plan that is going to have you pay the most in copays. All of them have in network care, which is good to know, and all of them have drug coverage as well. The only one
that offers out of network care would be the standard plan. So maybe right there, if you're seeing doctors and specialists that are not in network, you might really just want to keep that standard plan, because this actually provides coverage for out of network care as well. The basic plan, as well as the standard plan, cover non preferred drug coverage, whereas the all three of them cover preferred drug coverage. So now I want to go back to the cost and talk about the deductibles
and out of pocket maximums. So as I mentioned just right before this, the basic plan is the only one that doesn't offer or rather doesn't have you pay a deductible, it's just that you're going to pay more for those co pays, but the out of pocket maximums in, if you were ever in a situation where you had to really go through a lot of care in a particular year,
this is where you get to compare those different plans. The Blue Cross, Blue Shield, focus plan has the $9,000 for an out of pocket maximum for self only, whereas the basic is $7,500 in standard would be 6000 for self only, and then you can see the
cost double for self plus one and family. So that might be the other scenario that you want to run as well, is to say, if you needed some catastrophic care, you had multiple events that happened in a year, let's say you might want to know what your out of pocket maximum would be for the year, and just plan to have in an emergency fund, or some other funds that you have set aside to help pay for that care in a given year, it's good
to know the difference in costs there. Now the other point that I wanted to highlight going back up to this comparison up here is the Medicare Part B reimbursement, the only plan offered with Blue Cross, Blue Shield, that offers a reimbursement for when you sign up for Medicare Part B is the
basic plan, so that, again, is kind of that mid tier plan. So what that looks like is when you're retired and sign up for Medicare Part B and you have the Blue Cross, Blue Shield, basic plan, you could submit every single year for the Medicare Part B reimbursement, and they provide $800 per year per person if you've signed up for Medicare Part B. So what we're seeing here is Blue Cross, they're they're realizing that Medicare becomes the primary insurance, and so they're offering this
reimbursement, knowing that they're not having to pay as much for care once someone signs up for that Medicare Part B, and it just so happens that so many times I'm talking with federal employees and even retirees who don't know this fact, so just know that at some point it might make sense to consider that basic plan, if your plan is to sign up for Medicare Part B as well, because they offer that $800 a year reimbursement for
it. If you and your wife are covered under FEHB, and you've both signed up for Medicare Part B, you could use this for eight that's $800 per person as well, so you can get it and your spouse can get it as well, and you can just submit that reimbursement form every single year. So again, these are just some of the major highlights and differences between the basic plan, the standard plan and then now the focus plan as well.
Highly encourage you again to go look through this PDF, go on their website, and during Open Season, you can decide which plan that you should either remain in or maybe consider switching to to decide what's right for you and what's right for your family. My name is Christian with Plan Your Federal Retirement. If you have more questions, feel free to leave your question below in the comment section, and until next time, Happy Planning!