We don’t usually cover COBRA related topics here, because honestly it doesn’t pop up in the news that often, but that’s likely to change in the coming months, especially with how the recently-signed health care reform law changes things for COBRA recipients. The story we’re looking at today, “Health Insurance Dilemma: COBRA Subsidies Will Soon Run Out for Many” from DailyFinance, talks about how COBRA is about to run out for many people, and what people can do once they do lose coverage.<\/p>\n
COBRA, if you’re unaware, COBRA stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, and was passed in 1986. It’s a federal program that grants individuals who have lost their jobs health insurance coverage. Back in February, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which increased government subsidies on COBRA to 65% of the premium, greatly decreasing what recipients would have to pay. This, in turn, saw nearly a doubling of enrollment into COBRA.<\/p>\n
Well, at the end of this month, those subsidies will run out, leaving a lot of people using COBRA what to do next. Sadly, people leaving COBRA have few options under current law, even fewer if you have pre-existing conditions. Many health insurance companies currently won’t take people with pre-existing conditions — though that is changing, thankfully. Certain people are also eligible, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, to purchase individual health insurance policies despite pre-existing conditions, but only within sixty-three days after their COBRA policies expire.<\/p>\n
Another wrinkle is that people are only eligible for COBRA for eighteen months. After that, you’re on your own. Options such as high-risk pools — which begin next month — will be available, and state-run Medicaid programs are available for those who qualify. Though some people may find more options once the health care reform legislation fully takes effect, for right now this causes an odd situation for a lot of people.<\/p>\n
The main crux of the article is not to sit idly by and wait to make a decision. With hard deadlines for coverage, people under COBRA need to move now, not May 31st when the coverage runs out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We don’t usually cover COBRA related topics here, because honestly it doesn’t pop up in the news that often, but that’s likely to change in the coming months, especially with how the recently-signed health care reform law changes things for COBRA recipients. The story we’re looking at today, “Health Insurance Dilemma: COBRA Subsidies Will Soon Run Out for Many” from DailyFinance, talks about how COBRA is about to run out for many people, and what people can do once they do lose coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}