Stop OPM’s federal health-claims database before it becomes permanent

OPM should not be allowed to collect granular medical and pharmacy claims, retain member-level records over time, and preserve a route to connect those records back to real people and families. Stop OPM from collecting, retaining, linking, or using individual-level medical and pharmacy claims data from FEHB and PSHB carriers. Congress should prohibit this collection. Federal employees, retirees, postal employees, and our families should not have to surrender personal health records to a federal HR agency in order to have health coverage. OPM is seeking approval to obtain detailed claims information from health-plan carriers, including medical claims, pharmacy claims, encounter data, provider data, and cost information. — The records are described as pseudonymized, not fully de-identified. — A pseudonym is not anonymity. If records can be linked over time or connected back to a person through a retained identifier or other data, the government possesses health information that can be tied to a real individual. — Granular claims data can expose diagnoses, prescriptions, treatments, mental-health care, reproductive care, disability-related care, substance-use treatment, and patterns of medical visits for employees and family members. — OPM’s role in administering federal employment and health benefits does not give it a blank check to assemble person-level medical histories. — Cost oversight and fraud prevention do not justify building a government-held database of identifiable health claims. OPM can use aggregated, minimized, and genuinely de-identified information where it can demonstrate a legitimate need. Please take immediate action to: — Block OPM and OMB from approving or implementing this collection. — Prohibit OPM from requiring FEHB or PSHB carriers to provide any individual-level medical, pharmacy, or encounter claims data. — Prohibit OPM from retaining identifiers, creating longitudinal person-level health records, or re-identifying enrollees’ health data. — Require destruction of any individual-level claims data already obtained under this proposal. — Hold public hearings on why a federal HR agency believes it should have access to health information about employees, retirees, and their families. My family’s health information is not a management tool, a research asset, or a federal database to be breached — or a way for RFK Jr to put us in concentration camps based on the diagnosis and prescriptions we take like he campaigned on doing. Protect all private healthcare data now!