TGIF

Here’s a link to the Week in Congress’s useful review of activities on Capitol Hill.

Federal News Radio posted an article on the upcoming limited open season in the month of February that will allow federal employees another opportunity to switch to self plus one.  Annuitants can always drop down an enrollment type. The FEHBlog was intrigued by these Open Season transaction statistics provided by OPM:

2015 — 709,556
2014 — 434,853
2013 — 421,553
2012 — 304,439

OPM advised that around 1,000,000 FEHB enrollees were in a position to elect self plus one. Even assuming that some of these folks switched to self plus one and another plan concurrently, one would have expected at least 300,000 more transaction in the 2015 Open Season. It does take a while for changes to take hold in large programs like this one.

Let’s end the week with some good news.  According to this NPR article, “the teen pregnancy rate has halved since its peak in 1990, declining in all 50 states and among all racial and ethnic groups.”  That is a public health victory.