If you’re a Post Office employee or retiree (annuitant), you’ve probably heard by now that the Post Office is set to transition to the Postal Service Health Benefits Plan (PSHB), which the Office of Personnel Management describes as a “new, separate program within the FEHB program”, splitting its group health plan from the rest of the federal workforce in January 2025. This split is a legal requirement resulting from the passage of the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022.
The USPS is doing its best to ensure that employees and annuitants experience very little change to their coverage as a result. In fact, this is a necessity of the law under 5 U.S.C. 8903c(c)(2), which instructs that a health carrier’s “2025 PSHB plan must have equivalent benefits and cost sharing to the carrier’s 2025 FEHB plan”.