COBRA is the acronym for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. This federal law allows people to continue their health benefits, provided by a company's group plan, if they lose those benefits. Employees and their families can purchase benefits for the specified period of time allowed by COBRA.

Group benefits allowed under COBRA are medical, prescription drug, vision and dental. Benefits that are not included under COBRA are group life and disability.

Employers Who Must Comply with COBRA
Generally, employers who employed 20 or more employees on a typical business day during the preceding calendar year must comply with COBRA on the first day of January. The number of employees includes full and part-time employees, owners and officers.

Employees and Other Individuals who must be Offered COBRA
An employee, their spouse, ex-spouse and children who are or were covered under the group health plan must be offered COBRA. A person who was covered under the employer's group health plan for at least one day before a Qualifying Event is considered a Qualified Beneficiary. This also includes children, born or adopted by the COBRA Beneficiary during their COBRA coverage.

COBRA Beneficiaries, Qualifying Events and Maximum Coverage Period
When a COBRA Beneficiary experiences a Qualifying Event then they are eligible to purchase COBRA coverage up to the Maximum Coverage Period.

BENEFICIARY	QUALIFYING EVENT	MAXIMUM COVERAGE PERIOD
Employee, Spouse, Dependent Child	-Termination of employment (except for "gross misconduct") -Reduced hours	18 months
Spouse, Ex-spouse, Dependent Child	-Employee entitled to Medicare -Divorce or legal separation -Death of the employee	36 months
Dependent Child	-Loss of Dependent Status	36 months

Please use contact information for assistance.

COBRA Links

Affordable Solutions
An affordable, easy to use application for issuing COBRA notices, generating and tracking deadlines, automatic reminder reports and more.

Benefits Link
This site provides a comprehensive COBRA Q&A column.

Department of Labor
This site allows you to query for COBRA related issues and a host of other benefits related topics.

E.B.I.A.
This site allows you to query for COBRA related issues and many other benefits related topics.