Tuesday's Tidbits

The Washington Post reports this afternoon that President Obama will be nominating OPM acting Director Beth Cobert to be the permanent, Senate confirmed OPM Director.  

Because the FEHBlog is the blog of record for the FEHB Program, here is a link to OPM's Open Season announcement issued yesterday.  Emphasis is placed on the federal employees flexible spending account programs.

Today, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finally announced 2016 Medicare Parts A and B cost sharing amounts.  Complete tables of premiums, deductibles and other cost sharing amounts may be found at the link. Thank heavens.

The Hill provides a progress report on Congressional efforts to kill the 40% excise tax on high cost employer sponsored coverage.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin released their 2015 U.S. county health rankings, right here.  Modern Healthcare reports

The analysis ranks the health of each state's county against the healthiest county in the state and provides strategies for improvement. It doesn't compare counties from different states.  “Americans love rankings,” said Bridget Catlin, who directs the program at the Population Health Institute in Madison. “But we wanted to identify opportunities toward providing everybody a fair chance to be their healthiest and how many deaths could be avoided if every county could be as healthy as the healthiest.”