Open Season Guidance for Federal Employees as Congress Quizzes on Shutdown’s Impact

It’s officially open season for federal employees, the several weeks a year when federal employees and retirees can select their health care, dental, vision, flexible spending, and other benefits for the upcoming year. 

Open season for enrollees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB) runs from Monday, November 10 through December 8. Employees enrolled in the Postal Service Health Benefits Program (PSHB) will have until December 13 to make their choices.   

This year, the government shutdown is clouding things a bit, even as it’s on track to end soon. Senator James Lankford (R-OK) recently wrote a letter to the Office of Personnel Management, asking whether OPM will continue to pay federal employees health benefits during the government shutdown and what happens when employees are not getting paid and their paychecks don’t fund the FEHB program. 

“The men and women who serve our nation should not face uncertainty about their paychecks or their health coverage because of political obstruction in the Senate,” wrote Senator Lankford. 

Enrollees Urged to Review Plan Choices 

Regardless of which plan they choose, federal employees face rising costs. The average participant will pay about 12.3 percent more for their health coverage. 

As federal employees review their options for open season, the OPM website offers a toolkit, including plan comparison tools and more on the various benefit offerings. 

For 2026, FEHB will offer 132 plans, down from 146 in 2025. Most of the plans that left are local, except for the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) which will no longer offer their CDHP and High Option plans. However, they’ll still be available through PSHB for USPS employees and annuitants.

Health insurance experts and federal employee advocates urge enrollees to review their coverage and their options. In other words, you could be missing out on savings and benefits if you keep plans on autopilot each year. 

“There are some tweaks around, I would say, the edges of the program in terms of program-wide, but I think people really need to take a look at their individual plan. And each plan may change, and I think we’ve seen a little bit more changes, plan-to-plan, than we typically see or that we’ve see in the past,” said John Hatton, staff vice president at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), which offers webinars to help enrollees with plan choices. 

Even if you don’t intend to change plans, note that premiums are increasing for most, and that various benefit changes could impact out of pocket costs. 

“Make sure to review the following: how your plan’s premium is changing, section 2 of the official plan brochure for important benefit changes, and the online provider directory and prescription drug pricing tool to see if your doctors will remain in-network and that there aren’t significant cost or coverage changes to any prescription drugs you may take,” wrote Checkbook, which has published a guide to health plans for nearly five decades.