{"id":416,"date":"2014-10-05T18:15:36","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T18:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/?p=416"},"modified":"2015-02-12T20:38:59","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T20:38:59","slug":"response-to-continued-opm-stonewalling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/?p=416","title":{"rendered":"Response to Continued OPM Stonewalling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t normally post every back-and-forth in my attempts to shake things loose from the bureaucracy (as there are many and they are generally boring). However,\u00a0it has been 68 days since I submitted a FOIA request to OPM requesting the responses to Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB)\u00a0Program Carrier Letter 2014-17 (which announced that OPM would continue to discriminate on the basis of gender identity at the behest of insurers) in order to get a sense of how many insurers would actually be offering trans-inclusive health insurance in plan year 2015. \u00a0To date, OPM has failed to respond to the FOIA request, including not even acknowledging receipt.<\/p>\n<p>Since they&#8217;ve decided to stonewall, I&#8217;ve decided to escalate. \u00a0First, I&#8217;ve now included the Office of Civil Rights at my employing agency, since OPM is continuing to discriminate against all transgender Federal employees, myself included.<\/p>\n<p>Second, in the coming days, I will be referring the matter to my Senator, Sen. Tim Kaine, because letters from the Hill tend to actually force responses loose from Federal agencies. \u00a0The letter will also address the complete lack of response OPM has had to my <a title=\"Petition for Reconsideration to the Office of Personnel Management\" href=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/?p=421\">Petition for Reconsideration<\/a>, filed back in August, to their &#8220;nondiscrimination&#8221; rule that still allows discrimination against transgender Federal employees through FEHB.<\/p>\n<p>By the time I receive a response, it may well be &#8220;open season,&#8221; the period of the year when insurers plans for the next year are posted online for anyone to review any plan. \u00a0However, I nonetheless hope OPM responds, as manually culling through volume after volume of plan brochures to find which are discriminating and which are not is a heap of unnecessary work given that OPM requested (and presumably received) a simple list of which insurers are which.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-07-29-OPM-FOIA-Request-for-Plan-Response-to-CL-2014-17.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-418 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-07-29-OPM-FOIA-Request-for-Plan-Response-to-CL-2014-17-791x1024.png\" alt=\"2014 07 29 - OPM FOIA Request for Plan Response to CL 2014-17\" width=\"625\" height=\"809\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-07-29-OPM-FOIA-Request-for-Plan-Response-to-CL-2014-17-791x1024.png 791w, http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-07-29-OPM-FOIA-Request-for-Plan-Response-to-CL-2014-17-231x300.png 231w, http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-07-29-OPM-FOIA-Request-for-Plan-Response-to-CL-2014-17-624x807.png 624w, http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-07-29-OPM-FOIA-Request-for-Plan-Response-to-CL-2014-17.png 1275w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-10-05-Third-FOIA-Attempt-to-OPM-Insurer-Responses-to-FEHB-CL-2014-17.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-417 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-10-05-Third-FOIA-Attempt-to-OPM-Insurer-Responses-to-FEHB-CL-2014-17.png\" alt=\"2014 10 05 - Third FOIA Attempt to OPM - Insurer Responses to FEHB CL 2014-17\" width=\"782\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-10-05-Third-FOIA-Attempt-to-OPM-Insurer-Responses-to-FEHB-CL-2014-17.png 782w, http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-10-05-Third-FOIA-Attempt-to-OPM-Insurer-Responses-to-FEHB-CL-2014-17-300x191.png 300w, http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-10-05-Third-FOIA-Attempt-to-OPM-Insurer-Responses-to-FEHB-CL-2014-17-624x398.png 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 782px) 100vw, 782px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t normally post every back-and-forth in my attempts to shake things loose from the bureaucracy (as there are many and they are generally boring). However,\u00a0it has been 68 days since I submitted a FOIA request to OPM requesting the responses to Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB)\u00a0Program Carrier Letter 2014-17 (which announced that OPM would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,92],"tags":[19,4],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foia","category-health","tag-foia-2","tag-opm"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pI5m-6I","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}