Recently, it was announced that the Federal Long-Term Care Insurance Program (FLTCIP) would raise its premium costs for 274,000 active and retired federal employees enrolled in the program. For the average policyholder, prices will skyrocket upwards of 83 percent. This explosive price hike comes at a time when federal employee compensation is already severely lagging behind comparable private sector work, and now FLTCIP policy holders are expected to pay nearly double for their government-sponsored Long-Term Care Insurance. This cost spike is unacceptable, and NFFE, alongside our allies in Labor and on Capitol Hill, are analyzing the validity of these price increases.
On August 23, a bipartisan group in Congress sent a letter to the President of John Hancock Financial Services (the company with the contract to provide FLTCIP to federal employees) requesting documentation related to the price spike. Members of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee have vowed to review these documents and investigate the price hikes, but NFFE-IAM members must stand together against this corporate greed.
With Congress imposing countless austerity programs on the federal workforce, the FLTCIP price spike comes at a time when federal employees have already sacrificed $182 billion in the name of federal deficit reduction. Rising healthcare costs are just one of the many reasons Congress and the administration must work to undo austerity’s damage to federal employee living standards and work to close the ballooning pay gap. As it currently stands, federal employees make 35 percent less than comparable private sector employees. Federal employees do not live in a vacuum, their living expenses increase every year, just like private sector employees. Federal employees need a real pay adjustment.
“These outrageous increases in premium costs for long-term care insurance cannot be justified,” said NFFE National President William R. Dougan. “This is corporate greed at its worst, and it places our members in the precarious position of possibly having to forego long-term care coverage because they are priced out of the market. Unlike these corporate CEOs, our members do not make six- and seven-figure salaries and must live within their budget. And for many, they simply cannot afford to pay this huge cost increase, given all of their other expenses.”