| What: | The Federal Employee Dental and Vision Benefits Enhancement Act |
| When: | The bill became law in 2004, followed by the launch of the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program in the 2006 Open Season, with enrollee coverage beginning in 2007. |
| Why it matters: | In the early aughts, federal employees and retirees had access to a very limited amount of dental and vision coverage through the Federal Employees Health Benefits program. Congress’ action in 2004 led to the Office of Personnel Management’s creation of the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program. FEDVIP’s introduction in the 2006 Open Season opened the doors to much more extensive and robust health coverage for feds, who have only seen their options expand since the program’s launch. In part, the benefits expansion was meant to improve federal recruitment and retention. |
Politics
How FEDVIP changed the game for vision, dental benefits
By now, federal employees and annuitants may be used to the health care options they can access through the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program. But it hasn’t always been that way.
In the fall of 2006, federal employees opened their “Federal Almanacs” during that year’s Open Season to find — for the first time ever — a much broader range of vision and dental insurance options.
The Office of Personnel Management’s launch of FEDVIP in 2006 delineated much clearer rules around the types of vision and dental benefits federal employees could access, and massively broadened the types of benefits available to feds. Feds who enrolled that year saw their new dental and vision insurance kick in starting in January 2007.
For years before FEDVIP’s creation, federal employees and annuitants had much more limited insurance options when it came to vision and dental needs. Just a handful of plans in the Federal Employees Health Benefits program offered basic coverage — and that was about it.
“I suppose it’s funny how fast time flies when it comes to these programs that we now take for granted,” federal benefits expert Tammy Flanagan said in an interview with Federal News Network. “But they’re really not that old, given the whole area of federal benefits.”
Flanagan, who’s the senior benefits director at Retire Federal, remembers that at the time, federal employees and their families — including herself — experienced a significant gap in dental coverage, as well as a need for better and more robust options in dental or vision coverage.
“When I lived in Pennsylvania, we had a plan that provided almost complete dental coverage and vision coverage. We would go to the dentist, and we didn’t have to pay anything for our checkups,” Flanagan said. “But when we moved to Washington and started working for the government and switched to federal health benefits, we found out that wasn’t the case. We would go to the dentist, and we might get a $20 contribution from our health plan towards our checkups, but the rest of it was out of pocket.”
Role of Congress
Congress eventually caught wind of the federal insurance gap, and in 2004, lawmakers began pushing forward a bill, the “Federal Employee Dental and Vision Benefits Enhancement Act.” The goal was to make better vision and dental coverage a reality for federal employees across the country, and in part, improve the long-time challenge of federal recruitment and retention.
“The Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) is one of the federal government’s most important tools as we seek to recruit and retain the best federal workforce that this country has to offer. However, this program will not remain a model for excellence in employer-provided health care coverage unless we continue to explore avenues to enhance the care and the choices provided,” former Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) said to his fellow lawmakers on Dec. 6, 2004, on the House floor.
“While a fine example for comprehensive care, the FEHBP currently offers minimal dental and vision benefits,” Davis continued. “There has been a groundswell among federal employees and annuitants through numerous surveys and focus groups on this issue. More than any benefit, they want better coverage for dental and vision care. This will change with the passage of this important legislation.”
Former Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) continued the call for better benefits for feds.
“Dental and vision needs are some of the most expensive out-of-pocket expenses,” Moran said as Congress debated the bill. “We will now have it available for federal employees in the executive branch as well as the legislative branch, and that, too, is a very important accomplishment of the Government Reform Committee.”
On Dec. 23, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Federal Employee Dental and Vision Benefits Enhancement Act into law. The bill authorized OPM to establish the parameters for feds to access supplemental dental and vision benefits. The law also gave OPM authority over the contracts for the program. OPM is required to open the program to new carriers every seven years, and premium rates are negotiated annually.
OPM had a tight deadline of only two years to create and launch a new insurance program — a timeline similar to what OPM faced for creating the new Postal insurance program just last year.
“This was even more welcome back in those days, when we got FEDVIP, because there was really no controversy,” Flanagan said. “It was something that employees had wanted, and I think Congress was responding to that need.”
Federal benefits expert Kevin Moss described FEDVIP as a “huge part” of the overall health care paradigm — and something that FEHB hadn’t been helping with all that much, particularly for feds who needed more than just routine dental or vision care.
“The creation of this program really was to help federal employees have access to plans — and to make sure plans were actually being monitored and evaluated for the types of benefits that they were offering federal employees,” Moss, senior editor of Consumers’ Checkbook Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees, said in an interview. “This was a way to standardize the types of plans that would be available, similar to the way that FEHB plans work, and to plug a gap that existed in terms of what benefits were typically being offered in FEHB plans.”
OPM’s launch of FEDVIP
As for the initial launch of FEDVIP, Flanagan remembered OPM’s rollout of the program being “pretty smooth.”
“It did take time to sign those contracts — that was part of the delay in setting up the whole program,” Flanagan said. “But this was a brand-new program that needed to have premiums collected, decide who’s going to be covered, and how it’s going to be offered, and all those things that go into designing a brand-new federal program that has never before been offered.”
At the time, OPM had also recently launched the Federal Long-Term Care Insurance Program in 2002, which may have helped prepare the agency for the process of launching a new insurance program, and contributed to the relative ease of FEDVIP’s rollout.
Unlike FEHB where the federal government pays a share of insurance premiums, enrollees in FEDVIP are responsible for the full premium, according to the 2004 law. But FEDVIP premiums are also relatively small in comparison with the premiums for the FEHB program.
FEDVIP is open not only to current federal employees but also federal retirees — something that former Federal News Network columnist Mike Causey elaborated on in a October 2015 column during that year’s Open Season:
“Open Season is always important, especially for people who are about to retire. Like the Virginia-based reader who’s leaving in December — and he wants to keep his teeth. So, can he?” Causey wrote. “Short answer: Yes and yes. People can take their dental (and vision) policies with them into retirement. And they can pay their premiums via payroll (or annuity) deductions … If you are older, have neglected your teeth or know you have problems, a more expensive Cadillac-type plan might be in order.”
Causey also regularly shared insights and advice on dental and vision benefits for feds — including during a November 2013 episode of Your Turn.
How FEDVIP has changed
To this day, OPM continues to oversee FEDVIP, and each year, the agency has to draw up the contracts with the various companies who want to be involved in the program. For the 2025 plan year, FEDVIP contains seven dental carriers offering a combined total of 14 nationwide plans, and five vision carriers offering a total of 10 nationwide vision plans.
Outside of FEDVIP, some FEHB plans still offer dental and vision options, but the coverage is usually limited to preventative care, like routine cleanings, X-rays and exams. For individuals who require more robust coverage, FEDVIP has been a massive upgrade, according to federal benefits experts.
And if anything, the dental and vision insurance program has only continued to expand over time.
For example, OPM has since eliminated a previous one-year waiting period federal employees used to have to get through before being able to access coverage of orthodontics. FEDVIP also now has both standard and high options for federal employees and annuitants.
Most recently, in 2023, OPM expanded eligibility for FEDVIP, opening it to part-time, seasonal and temporary federal employees, as well as Postal Service workers — a combined total of more than 200,000 individuals who can now enroll in the insurance program.
“I don’t remember that there was anything taken away from the program. I think it’s really been just expanding it to meet the needs and the requests of federal workers and retirees,” Flanagan said. “It’s one of the success programs that we can tout.”
The post How FEDVIP changed the game for vision, dental benefits first appeared on Federal News Network.
