Trump's employment cessation endangers postal workers' medical coverage, claims Inspector General

The Postal Service Health Benefits Program (PSHB), launched last fall by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), has faced operational challenges due to staffing shortages and a funding cut.

The hiring freeze imposed by President Trump interfered with the hiring of IT workers to take over the PSHB's underlying data platform from a government contractor. As a result, OPM had seven out of a minimum 11 employees needed to administer the PSHB program. The deferred resignation program took away even more employees, leaving only three staff to administer the data platform.

The loss of critical staff, in conjunction with the hiring freeze, risked operational failure of the data platform. If the data fails, people can fall out of the system and not get enrolled. OPM, if fully staffed, would try to catch that before someone shows up at the pharmacy to be told they cannot get their drugs.

OPM claims to have made changes in staff workloads and assignments to maintain and operate systems. However, when requested, OPM was unable to provide a contingency plan to ensure continuity of operations for the PSHB program in the absence of securing funding.

The former OPM official emphasizes the need to invest in people and IT in the early years to deal with the change management and unforeseen issues of a big new program. They warn that if the agency's current leadership cannot quickly right the ship, the fall's Open Season for postal workers could resemble the fraught rollout of the Affordable Care Act more than a decade ago.

The inspector general will continue to evaluate the staffing and financial resources during future oversight work. They acknowledge OPM's statement but say no evidence was provided to confirm that these changes address the finding and recommendation. The inspector general also notes that programs can fall apart on the data, as there are all these different sources of data that need to be merged together to make eligibility and enrollment decisions.

The hiring freeze effectively halted OPM's search for the additional four workers, including in one instance where an applicant had their job offer rescinded in January. The former OPM official mentions that the search results do not provide information about the current leader of the Postal Service Health Benefits Program at the Federal Civil Service Commission responsible for addressing staffing shortages and eliminating the data system failure risk caused by the Trump administration's actions.

The Postal Service Health Benefits Program was intended to provide a more modern process for employees seeking to enroll or change their coverage and a centralized system for HR officials to better monitor for improper payments and enrollments. The lack of additional funding risks rendering the implemented PSHB program processes and systems unusable.

OPM insists it has taken steps to mitigate issues caused by the hiring freeze and Congress' funding cut. The inspector general will provide further updates on the situation in future reports.