When you were working, Open Season came with reminders. HR sent emails. Someone in the office mentioned the new premiums. The benefits fair had a table with free pens. Then you retired on disability, and all of that stopped.
Nobody at your old agency is going to remind you now. Your health insurance moved from your agency to OPM when your disability retirement was approved, and OPM does not send much. Starting in 2026, OPM announces Open Season online only, so if you were waiting for a letter, it is not coming.
This guide walks through what Open Season means for you as a FERS disability annuitant. It covers what you can change, how to do it, what is different now that you are retired, and a few things about your situation that a regular retiree does not have to think about.
When it happens
Open Season for the 2027 plan year is expected to run from Monday, November 9 through Monday, December 14, 2026. OPM usually posts the official confirmation in early to mid October. The pattern has held for years, so you can plan around those dates now and check opm.gov in October to be sure.
Changes you make during Open Season take effect in early January. For annuitants, OPM has used the first day of the first pay period in the new year, which lands in the first few weeks of January.
What Open Season covers for an annuitant
Open Season is the one time each year you can make changes without needing a qualifying life event. For you, that means:
- FEHB or PSHB health coverage. You can switch plans, switch options within a plan, change between Self Only, Self Plus One, and Self and Family, or cancel. (If you retired from the Postal Service, you are in PSHB, not FEHB. The mechanics are nearly the same.)
- FEDVIP dental and vision. Annuitants can enroll, change, or cancel. You do not have to be in FEHB to have FEDVIP.
And a few things it does not cover:
- Flexible spending accounts. FSAFEDS is for employees only. Annuitants cannot participate, and that trips people up their first year out.
- Life insurance. FEGLI is not an Open Season program. Your FEGLI choices were locked in on the forms you filed at retirement.
- Your annuity itself. Open Season has nothing to do with your disability annuity, your earnings limit, or your SSDI. It is health, dental, and vision only.
If you do nothing, your coverage continues
You are not required to act. If you are happy with your plan and it is still offered, your enrollment rolls over automatically. Most annuitants do nothing, and for many of them that is fine.
But there is one situation where doing nothing is a choice you should make on purpose. Every year a handful of plans leave the program. If your plan is one of them and you do not pick a new one, OPM moves you into the lowest-cost nationwide plan by default. For 2026 that was the GEHA Benefit Plan High Option for FEHB and FEP Blue Focus for PSHB. The default plan may or may not fit your medical needs, and as a disability annuitant, your medical needs are probably the whole reason you are reading this.
So at minimum, check whether your plan is still on the list for 2027. That takes five minutes on the OPM plan comparison tool.
How to make a change when you no longer have HR
Employees use their agency system. You do not have one anymore. Annuitants have three ways to make an Open Season change:
- Online at retireefehb.opm.gov. You will need your CSA claim number (the one that starts with a 7 or 8 on your OPM correspondence) to set up or log in to your account.
- By phone through Open Season Express at 1-800-332-9798.
- By mail. Annuitants use form RI 79-9 (or SF 2809). It goes to OPM’s Open Season Processing Center in Lawrence, Kansas, and it must be postmarked by the last day of Open Season. The address is printed on the form and on the OPM Open Season page.
FEDVIP changes go through BENEFEDS at benefeds.gov, not OPM. That is the same as when you were working.
If you mail your election, send it early. OPM’s health and insurance office has lost staff this year, and a form postmarked on the last day with a problem in it has no time to be fixed.
Adding a family member this year has a new step
If you plan to add a spouse or a child during Open Season, plan on sending proof. OPM finalized a rule in July 2026 requiring documentation for any family member added to FEHB or PSHB coverage, and it has told agencies and its own retirement office to verify 100 percent of Open Season additions for the 2027 plan year. That means a marriage certificate, a birth certificate, or similar paperwork.
If the documentation is not provided, the family member can be denied or removed from coverage. Gather the documents before Open Season opens. The window is short and the review does not wait.
The part that is different for disability annuitants
Most Open Season guides are written for people who retired at 60 or 62 and are thinking about Medicare. Your situation may look different, and a few things deserve a closer look.
Medicare may already be in your picture, or about to be.
FERS disability retirement requires you to apply for Social Security disability. If SSDI was approved, you become eligible for Medicare 24 months after your SSDI entitlement began, no matter your age. A lot of disability annuitants hit that two-year mark without noticing, because nobody connects it to their federal health plan.
Once you have Medicare, your FEHB or PSHB plan coordinates with it, and some plans reduce or waive your deductible and copays when Medicare pays first. That changes which plan is the best value for you. A plan that made sense when you were paying everything out of pocket may not be the right plan once Medicare is primary, and a cheaper plan may suddenly cover almost everything. Open Season is when you can act on that.
Whether to take Medicare Part B is a separate and personal decision that depends on your income, your plan, and your health. I am not going to tell you what to choose. I will say that if your Medicare eligibility date falls in the next year, look at the plan brochures with Medicare in mind, not as a healthy 40-year-old.
Your premiums come out of your annuity, after tax.
When you were working, your FEHB premium came out before taxes under premium conversion. Annuitants do not get that. The premium is deducted from your monthly annuity after tax. Your share of the cost is the same percentage it always was, but the take-home effect is bigger. If you switch to a more expensive plan, the real cost to you is the full premium difference, not a tax-reduced version of it.
With FEHB premiums rising 12 to 13 percent a year for two years running, that math matters more than it used to.
Your medical needs are the reason you are here.
A disability annuitant is, by definition, a person with an ongoing medical condition. So the questions that matter most are the boring ones. Are your treating doctors in the network? Are your prescriptions on the formulary, and at what tier? What is the out-of-pocket maximum, since you are more likely than most to reach it? Does the plan cover the specialist, the therapy, or the equipment you actually use?
Every plan publishes a brochure, and the brochures are where the answers live. The comparison tool gives you premiums and a summary. The brochure tells you whether your infusion is covered. Read the brochure.
Five years of coverage still matters if your annuity ever stops.
You kept FEHB into retirement because you met the five-year rule or were covered since your first chance to enroll. That eligibility does not expire. But a disability annuity can end, usually because OPM finds you recovered or your earnings exceed the limit. If that happens, your health coverage situation changes too. That is not an Open Season issue, but it is worth knowing that the choices you make during Open Season are made on an annuity that has conditions attached.
A simple way to handle it
You do not need to spend Open Season reading all 132 plan brochures. Here is a reasonable approach:
- In October, check opm.gov to confirm the dates and find out whether your current plan is still offered for 2027.
- Look at your own year. Did your doctors change? Did a new prescription start? Did you become Medicare eligible, or will you in 2027? Did you add or lose a family member?
- If nothing changed and your plan is still offered, you can stop here. Your coverage continues.
- If something changed, use the comparison tool to narrow to two or three plans, then read those brochures for your specific drugs, providers, and services.
- Make your change online or by phone before December 14. If you mail it, mail it in November.
- If you are adding a family member, have the documents ready before you start.
One last thing
Open Season is the one benefit decision you still get to make every year without asking anyone’s permission. Most of what happened to get you here was decided by doctors, supervisors, and OPM. This part is yours. It is worth the five minutes to check, and it is worth the hour if something in your life has changed.
If you are still working through the disability retirement process and are not an annuitant yet, the health insurance side of that decision has its own rules. You can read about keeping FEHB, FEGLI, and survivor benefits under FERS disability retirement on the TFDR blog, or reach out for a candidacy assessment.
Open Season dates for plan year 2027 (Nov. 9 – Dec. 14, 2026) follow OPM’s standard schedule and were reported by NARFE and other federal benefits sources; OPM typically confirms in October. Annuitant enrollment methods, mailing address, and forms: OPM, “Enroll,” opm.gov/healthcare-insurance. Digital-only Open Season announcements beginning 2026: OPM email to annuitants, Nov. 3, 2025. Default enrollment for dropped plans and 2026 premium increases: OPM Open Season press release, Oct. 9, 2025, and FEDweek. Family member verification: OPM Benefits Administration Letter 26-202 (July 15, 2026) and OPM final rule effective July 2, 2026. FSAFEDS employee-only eligibility: OPM and FSAFEDS program materials. Open Season authority: 5 CFR 890.301(f). FEHB continuation into retirement: 5 U.S.C. § 8905(b). Medicare eligibility after 24 months of SSDI entitlement: Social Security Administration. This article is educational and reflects information available as of August 2026. Verify current dates and plan details on opm.gov.