About that average 7.2 percent premium increase …

Well, now that the news on FEHBP health insurance premium increases has settled in—we’ve gotten some emails taking issue with the OPM statement that the average employee share of those premiums will go up 7.2 percent.

Of course averages are strange things. If you have two people in a group and one is 75 years old and the other is 77, the average age of a person in that group is 76. Throw a 37-year-old into that group, and it brings the average age down to 63.

But that doesn’t make the guys who are 75 and 77 feel any younger, any more than a 7.2 percent average premium increase makes a plan beneficiary who’s facing a 30 percent increase feel any better.

And we have heard from some folks whose FEHBP plan premiums are going up far more than 7.2 percent.

Of course, there are other variables, such as how comprehensive the coverage in a plan is (better plans just cost more), and what the percentage increase means in actual dollars (that is, there’s a big difference between 20 percent of $100 and 20 percent of $300).

So, following on an earlier post on this blog—did you get nailed this time, or come in closer to the 7.2 percent average?