Weekend Update

Happy Mothers' Day, readers.

Congress remains in session this week on Capitol Hill. Here's a link to the Week in Congress's report on last week's actions on the Hill. As noted last week, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee plans to vote on Dale Cabaniss's nomination to be OPM Director during a business meeting on Wednesday morning.

The Federal News Network reports on the state of the Postal Service's effort to create a 10 year business plan as the House Oversight and Reform Committee requested last month. “Ultimately, the question is, what’s the role for your government-sponsored Postal Service in a 21st-century marketplace, and how are you going to fund it? So that’s a broad public policy discussion that we will continue to have with our public officials as well as other postal stakeholders,” [Postmaster General Megan] Brennan said to a group of reporters.  She said to expect the report to be issued in 45 days.

Employee Benefit News reports that Ocean Spray plans to stop charging employees co-payments for mental health care in order to improve access to that care, which is a concern that OPM raised in the 2020 call letter for FEHB benefit and rate proposals. Nothing in the rather complex federal mental health parity law prevents a plan from providing better benefits for mental health vs. medical care.

Willis Towers Watson issued a survey on employer sponsored health care in the U.S. last week.  The FEHBlog took note of the fact that

Nearly four in 10 employers (38%) are considering opening a health center at their workplace location to provide preventive, primary and urgent care by 2020 — a jump from the 26% that offer this today. Further, just over one in four employers (26%) plan to offer near-site health centers by 2020 — an even greater jump from the 8% that offer this today.

Employers are also expanding the types of care offered at health centers, adding mental health services, such as behavioral health counseling, in the next few years. Roughly half indicate they will offer onsite or near-site mental health services through the vendor managing the health center or through a community provider by 2020.

In the FEHBlog's view, one of the major defects in the Affordable Care Act lies its focus on providing highly regulated health insurance, rather than on improving access to health care services. As a result you get stories like the Sunday Washington Post lengthy story today on a struggling hospital in rural Oklahoma. Employers are acting on the problem, why doesn't Congress?