{"id":38134,"date":"2025-07-10T10:31:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=38134"},"modified":"2025-07-10T10:31:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T15:31:23","slug":"pshb-program-at-risk-of-underfunding-understaffing-no-plan-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2025\/07\/10\/pshb-program-at-risk-of-underfunding-understaffing-no-plan-b\/","title":{"rendered":"PSHB Program at Risk of Underfunding, Understaffing; No Plan B"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fedweek\/Oversight.gov -The Postal Service Health Benefits program faces \u201ccritical resource issues\u201d and the OPM has not ensured that the underlying system \u201cwill remain fully staffed, supported and funded\u201d in light of OPM\u2019s downsizing and reorganization, an inspector general audit has said.<\/p>\n<p>OPM further does not have \u201ca contingency plan to ensure continuity of operations for the PSHB program in the absence of secure funding,\u201d leaving the program at risk of being unable to process open season enrollment decisions or enrollment changes due to life events, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cflash report\u201d from the IG comes as the PSHB is in the middle of its first year of operation as a carve-out from the FEHB for Postal Service employees and retirees, and about four months before the open season for enrollment decisions for the 2026 plan year.<\/p>\n<p>The report said that the central enrollment system created for the PSHB is based on a data platform requiring 11 skilled employees to operate but OPM has not filled vacancies in four of those positions due to the hiring freeze and three other current employees are due to leave under the deferred resignation program. \u201cThe loss of critical staff, in conjunction with the hiring freeze, risked operational failure of the data platform,\u201d it said. Read more at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fedweek.com\/fedweek\/audit-pshb-program-at-risk-of-underfunding-understaffing-no-plan-b\/\">Fedweek<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Read full report from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oversight.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/documents\/reports\/2025-07\/2025-PSHB-091%20-%20Final%20Flash%20Report%20-%20Critical%20PSHBP%20Resource%20Issues_Redacted.pdf\">Oversight<\/a> (PDF)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>PEN:\u00a0<\/strong><em>We never expected much from this change in our health insurance &#8211; and our expectations are bang proven right.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/FEDweek2.jpg\">\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-38135 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/FEDweek2-300x170.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"170\" srcset=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/FEDweek2-300x170.jpg 300w, https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/FEDweek2-123x70.jpg 123w, https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/FEDweek2.jpg 495w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fedweek\/Oversight.gov -The Postal Service Health Benefits program faces \u201ccritical resource issues\u201d and the OPM has not ensured that the underlying system \u201cwill remain fully staffed, supported and funded\u201d in light of OPM\u2019s downsizing and reorganization, an inspector general audit has said. OPM further does not have \u201ca contingency plan to ensure continuity of operations for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38136,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38134\/revisions\/38136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}