By Amanda Seitz, Maia Rosenfeld
April 21, 2026 / 5:00 AM EDT / KFF Health News
Democratic lawmakers are demanding that the Trump administration stop a plan to collect sensitive medical records for millions of federal workers, retirees and their family members.
The Office of Personnel Management has asked 65 insurers to provide monthly reports containing detailed medical and pharmaceutical claims data for more than 8 million people enrolled in federal health plans, KFF Health News reported. The request, first sent to insurers in December, does not instruct companies to remove identifying information and states insurers are legally permitted to disclose “protected health information” to OPM.
Two letters from congressional Democrats — one signed by 16 senators led by Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), and another led by Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee — urge OPM Director Scott Kupor to withdraw the proposal. The House Democrats warned that collecting broad, personally identifiable data about medical care “raises concerns that OPM could target certain federal employees seeking vital health care services that the Administration disagrees with on political grounds.”
Senate Democrats argue OPM is not prepared to safeguard such sensitive data and could share records across agencies, pointing to past instances in which the government used personal information from other programs. They contend insurers’ sharing the information with OPM could violate the core principles of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), threatening patient-clinician relationships and exposing deeply personal information about mental health, chronic conditions and other sensitive diagnoses.
OPM has said it intends to use the claims data for oversight and to manage federal health plans, and health policy experts noted the information could be used to pursue cost-saving measures. But ethicists, privacy advocates and insurance executives have expressed alarm at the scale and detail of the records OPM is seeking, including names and diagnoses.
The congressional letters by Democrats are unlikely on their own to stop OPM’s plan because Republicans control Congress and have not publicly weighed in. OPM did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the letters or to concerns raised about the proposal.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, called the plan alarming. AFGE National President Everett Kelley said the proposal comes amid coordinated attacks on federal employees and an expanded willingness to share sensitive personal data across agencies. “The question of what this administration intends to do with eight million Americans’ most private health information is not academic. It is urgent,” the union said, and Kelley praised lawmakers’ objections.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom producing in-depth journalism on health issues and is part of KFF, an independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.