Updated August 2, 2026. Quick answer: to keep federal health insurance in retirement you must have been enrolled in FEHB continuously for the five years immediately before you retire — or, if you have less than five years of service, for the whole time since you first could have enrolled. Previous enrollment further back does not count. It is the five years right before the door.
The rule, verbatim
“FEHB law requires a retiring employee to be covered under FEHB for the 5 years of service immediately before retirement or, if less than 5 years, for all service since the employee’s first opportunity to enroll in FEHB.”
OPM, FEHB frequently asked questions
What people get wrong about it
It is not cumulative. Fifteen years of coverage early in a career, then a lapse, then retirement, does not satisfy it. The window that matters is the one that ends on your retirement date.
What OPM’s wording does not settle, we are not going to invent. The rule speaks of being “covered under FEHB”, not of holding your own enrollment, and the treatment of periods when you were covered as a family member on someone else’s enrollment is exactly the kind of detail worth confirming with your agency benefits officer in writing rather than reading off any website, this one included.
The clock does not pause and cannot be finished later. This is the condition that quietly kills a postponed MRA+10 retirement: reinstating FEHB when the postponed annuity begins works only if the five-year rule was already satisfied on the day you separated. Which door you leave through is the other half of that question, and the two conditions have to be met together.
If you are inside five years of leaving
This is one of the few benefits questions with an unambiguous answer: if you intend to retire from federal service and there is any chance of wanting coverage afterwards, do not drop FEHB in the last five years to save premiums. The saving is a few thousand dollars; the thing being given up is lifetime access to a group plan that keeps paying alongside Medicare.
Whether to also take Medicare Part B when you turn 65 is a genuinely open question with arguments on both sides, and it is not this page. The rules for staying on an employer plan past 65 set out the enrollment mechanics.
The five-year rule from OPM’s published FEHB guidance; the reinstatement condition after a postponed retirement from the OPM CSRS and FERS Handbook, Chapter 42. Read August 2026. General information, not advice.