Federal dental and vision coverage is not part of your health plan. It is a separate program with separate carriers, separate enrollment, and a completely different cost structure, and the cost structure is where people get caught out.
Every dollar figure below comes from the 2026 rate charts the Office of Personnel Management published for the Federal Employees Dental and Vision Insurance Program, read on September 6, 2026. Dental rates vary by rating region; vision rates do not.
What FEDVIP Is and Who Can Enroll
FEDVIP was created by the Federal Employee Dental and Vision Benefits Enhancement Act of 2004. OPM contracts with private carriers, BENEFEDS handles enrollment and premium collection, and the carriers pay the claims.
Employees qualify if they are eligible for FEHB, whether or not they actually carry it. Annuitants who retired on an immediate annuity or a disability retirement qualify, and OPM is explicit that there is no five-year rule the way there is for carrying FEHB into retirement. Survivor annuitants and compensationers can enroll too.
The group that surprises people is the military one. Section 715 of the FY 2017 NDAA opened FEDVIP dental to retired members of the uniformed services and the National Guard and Reserve, including gray-area retirees under age 60, when the TRICARE Retiree Dental Program shut down. FEDVIP vision is narrower for that population: you need to be enrolled in a TRICARE health plan to get it. Retiring service members have a 91-day enrollment window that opens 31 days before the retirement date and closes 60 days after.
Deferred annuitants, former spouses of civilians, per diem employees and FEHB Temporary Continuation of Coverage enrollees are not eligible at all.
The Cost Rule That Matters: You Pay All of It
This is the headline. OPM describes FEDVIP as operating “on an enrollee-pay-all basis.” There is no government contribution to a FEDVIP premium. None.
That is the opposite of FEHB, where the government picks up the large majority of the cost and the number you see on your pay stub is only your share. If you are used to reading FEHB premiums that way, read FEDVIP rates as the whole thing.
The only subsidy is tax treatment, and it depends on your status:
- Active employees: OPM states that premiums for enrolled Federal and Postal employees are withheld from salary on a pre-tax basis, so the real cost to your take-home pay is roughly 70% to 75% of the sticker rate depending on your bracket.
- Annuitants and uniformed-services retirees: the allotment comes out after tax. The pre-tax mechanism is the FedFlex cafeteria plan, and FedFlex extends pre-tax dental and vision allotments only to a “Covered Employee” (a current employee or a reemployed annuitant), not to a retiree drawing an annuity. MyAirForceBenefits says the same on the military side: the FEDVIP allotment from retired pay is set up post-tax.
That gap of a few dollars a month is small, but it flips the math for retirees more often than people expect.
2026 FEDVIP Vision Premiums
Vision is the easy one. Five carriers, ten plan options, one flat rate nationwide.
| 2026 vision plan | Self Only | Self Plus One | Self and Family |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aetna Vision Preferred, Standard | $6.87 | $13.72 | $20.58 |
| Blue Cross Blue Shield FEP Vision, Standard | $7.71 | $15.43 | $23.14 |
| VSP Vision Care, Standard | $7.76 | $15.51 | $23.29 |
| MetLife Federal Vision, Standard | $7.95 | $15.90 | $23.86 |
| UnitedHealthcare Vision, Standard | $8.10 | $16.21 | $24.31 |
| MetLife Federal Vision, High | $11.98 | $23.94 | $35.92 |
| Blue Cross Blue Shield FEP Vision, High | $12.26 | $24.51 | $36.77 |
| Aetna Vision Preferred, High | $12.31 | $24.57 | $36.88 |
| UnitedHealthcare Vision, High | $12.37 | $24.72 | $37.09 |
| VSP Vision Care, High | $14.56 | $29.16 | $43.75 |
Monthly rates from OPM’s 2026 FEDVIP vision premium rate chart. The same table appears, figure for figure, on the Department of the Air Force benefits library, which is a useful second read.
The whole vision program costs between $82 and $175 a year for one person. That is a narrow spread, and it is small money next to what an exam plus lenses costs cash.
2026 FEDVIP Dental Premiums
Dental is messier. Eleven carriers, twenty-one plan options, and rates that move with your rating region. The table below gives the self-only monthly range across every rating region OPM publishes for each carrier.
| 2026 dental carrier | Standard, self only | High, self only | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dominion National | $12.65 to $18.57 | $21.32 to $31.44 | Regional |
| Triple-S Salud | Not offered | $13.41 | Puerto Rico |
| Delta Dental Federal Employees | $22.38 to $31.74 | $39.67 to $59.15 | Nationwide |
| Blue Cross Blue Shield FEP Dental | $22.75 to $33.71 | $42.27 to $62.49 | Nationwide |
| GEHA Connection Dental Federal | $23.44 to $34.67 | $41.10 to $61.17 | Nationwide |
| MetLife Federal Dental | $23.60 to $31.07 | $40.76 to $56.12 | Nationwide |
| United Concordia Dental | $23.68 to $35.12 | $39.78 to $59.32 | Nationwide |
| Aetna Dental | $24.14 to $33.76 | $38.85 to $54.58 | Nationwide |
| Humana Dental | $25.87 to $37.90 | $47.08 to $69.85 | Regional |
| UnitedHealthcare Dental | $27.47 to $40.84 | $48.10 to $71.78 | Nationwide |
| EmblemHealth Dental | $45.85 | $68.97 | Regional (NY area) |
Monthly rates, from OPM’s 2026 FEDVIP dental premium rate chart. OPM publishes a separate dental rating-areas file, and rating regions are not the same from carrier to carrier, so your actual rate depends on your ZIP code.
Two shortcuts for reading this. Self plus one is almost exactly twice the self-only rate, and self and family almost exactly three times, in nearly every plan and region (Triple-S Salud in Puerto Rico is the one real exception). And HealthPartners Dental left the program after 2025, so if that was your plan you had to pick a new one.
Across the whole dental program, the cheapest self-and-family coverage is $37.94 a month and the most expensive is $215.35 a month. That is a spread of more than $2,100 a year for the same category of benefit.
Annual Maximums and Waiting Periods
FEDVIP’s structural advantage over retail dental insurance is what it does not do.
There is no waiting period for major services. Crowns, bridges, dentures and implants are covered from day one, and under most plans there is no 12-month wait or age cap on orthodontia either. Retail individual dental plans routinely impose 6 to 12 months on basic work and 12 months on major work.
Annual maximums vary by carrier and option, and this is where the high options earn their premium. MetLife’s 2026 Federal Dental Plan caps the Standard option at a $2,000 calendar-year maximum per person and makes the High option unlimited. Orthodontia carries a separate lifetime maximum: $1,500 per person on Standard, and $3,500 per child or $3,000 per adult on High.
In-network preventive care is typically covered at 100% with no deductible. MetLife’s out-of-network deductible is $100 per person on Standard and $50 on High, which is a reminder that “no deductible” applies to network dentists only.
There are no pre-existing condition limitations anywhere in the program, because OPM buys it as group coverage.
How FEDVIP Coordinates With FEHB and PSHB
If your health plan already includes dental or vision benefits, the health plan pays first and FEDVIP pays second. OPM says so directly, and BCBS’s federal brochures repeat it.
This matters more than it sounds. Plenty of FEHB and PSHB plans already cover two cleanings and an exam a year. If yours does, a FEDVIP high option is buying you coverage on the margin, not from zero, and the extra $250 a year for a high option may be paying for very little.
Read your health plan’s brochure first. Then decide whether the standard option is enough.
Is FEDVIP Worth It Against Cash Prices?
Run the arithmetic before you enroll. Here is the honest version.
Vision usually clears the bar. A standard vision plan costs $82 to $97 a year for one person. An eye exam without insurance runs about $50 to $250, and a complete pair of glasses has a median out-of-pocket cost around $224. One exam and one pair of glasses a year already exceeds the premium, and the plans include a frame and lens allowance plus lens-option coverage. If you wear glasses or contacts, this is close to a lock.
Preventive-only dental is a coin flip. A standard dental plan at $24 a month is $288 a year. Two cleanings cash cost roughly $150 to $400 total based on typical fees on our teeth cleaning cost page. If cleanings are genuinely all you use, you may be roughly even or slightly behind, and a dental savings plan or a straight cash-pay negotiation can beat it.
Dental wins decisively the moment you need real work. Our root canal cost page puts a cash root canal in the high hundreds to low thousands depending on the tooth, and the crown that follows adds four figures again. Against that, a nationwide high option at $466 to $861 a year for self only (the $38.85 to $71.78 monthly range above) with no waiting period and a large or unlimited annual maximum is cheap insurance. This is also where FEDVIP separates from the retail market: as our dental insurance cost page shows, individual retail premiums are lower, but those plans typically impose waiting periods on major work and cap the annual benefit well below what FEDVIP high options allow.
One more lever. You can pay FEDVIP-covered out-of-pocket costs from a FSAFEDS health care FSA, which stacks another 20% to 30% of tax savings on top. What you cannot do is pay the FEDVIP premium itself from an FSA.
Enrolling, Changing, and Cancelling
Enrollment happens at BENEFEDS, not through your agency, and not on the SF 2809. Employee Express, PostalEase and MyPay may link out to BENEFEDS but cannot process the election.
Once you are in, coverage continues automatically each year unless you change it, which is the opposite of how FSAFEDS works. OPM warns that opportunities to cancel are “extremely limited”: outside a qualifying life event, you can only drop FEDVIP during the annual Federal Benefits Open Season, which by regulation runs from the Monday of the second full workweek in November through the Monday of the second full workweek in December. Premiums can change every plan year, so check the new rate chart each autumn even if you are keeping the same plan.
Dental and vision are separate elections. Enrolling in one does not enroll you in the other.
The Bottom Line
FEDVIP costs $6.87 to $14.56 a month for self-only vision and $12.65 to $71.78 a month for self-only dental in 2026, and you pay all of it. Employees get the premium pre-tax; retirees do not. Vision almost always pays for itself if you wear correction. Dental is a judgment call at the preventive-only level and an easy yes if you expect a crown, a root canal or braces, because no waiting period plus a large annual maximum is worth more than the premium gap. Check what your FEHB or PSHB plan already pays before you buy the high option, since it pays first and FEDVIP only fills the rest.