Office of Personnel Management January 2015 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Office of Personnel Management is proposing to add a new system of records to its inventory of record systems subject to the Privacy Act of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a), as amended. This action is necessary to meet the requirements of the Privacy Act to publish in the Federal Register notice of the existence and character of records maintained by the agency (5 U.S.C. 552a(e)(4)). The Integrity Assurance Officer Control Files (Internal 20) system of records has been operational since February 2005 without incident. Previously, OPM has relied on preexisting Privacy Act system of records notices for the collection and maintenance of these records. In an effort to increase transparency, OPM published a separate notice for this system (Federal Register/Volume 79, No. 71/April 14, 2014/page 20931), and no comments were received. At this time we are publishing the complete text of this system of records.

The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is issuing a proposed rule to amend the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program regulations to clarify the conditional nature of FEHB Program benefits and benefit payments under the plan's coverage as subject to a carrier's entitlement to subrogation and reimbursement recovery, and therefore, that such entitlement falls within the preemptive scope of the U.S.C. FEHB contracts must include a provision incorporating the carrier's subrogation and reimbursement rights and FEHB plan brochures must explain the carrier's subrogation and reimbursement policy.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to make changes to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Acquisition Regulation (FEHBAR). These changes would: Define which subscriber groups may be included for consideration as similarly sized subscriber groups (SSSGs); require the SSSG to be traditional community rated; establish that traditional community-rated Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) plans must select only one rather than two SSSGs; and make conforming changes to FEHB contract language to account for the new medical loss ratio (MLR) standard for most community-rated FEHB plans.