Litigation

COBRA subsidy extended - again!

By John Walch

Last night, President Obama signed into law an extension of the COBRA subsidy period until March 31.  The extension allows employees who are involuntarily terminated between March 1 and March 31 to receive the 65% COBRA premium subsidy for up to 15 months.  The new law also broadens the definition of "assistance eligible individual" to include employees who lost coverage due to a reduction in hours, but did not elect COBRA then and were later terminated.  Under the original law, such employees were not eligible for the subsidy, since the involuntary termination did not cause the loss of coverage.

The new law is effective as of March 1, so employees who terminated after February 28 when the subsidy period expired are eligible for the extension.  Although the extension is for only the month of March, several pending bills would provide for much longer extensions.

Full post as published by Northwest Business Litigation Blog on March 03, 2010 (boomark / email).