Advice to the Jobless on Getting Health Coverage

Advice to the Jobless on Getting Health Coverage


Ángel Franco/The New York Times

Jennifer C. Graham, shown with twin daughters Judith, left and Loraine, signed up for Cobra after she was laid off. But the monthly payments are more than half her unemployment benefit.


By LESLEY ALDERMAN
Published: February 27, 2009


IT’S the dreaded one-two punch. You lose your job. Then you have to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket for the health insurance an employer no longer provides.

Besides the financial pain, even finding affordable insurance can be agonizing. Which is why today’s “Patient Money” column is here to help.

We’ll talk about steps to take if you have recently lost your job and need health coverage. Next week, in a companion column, my colleague Walecia Konrad will provide health benefits guidance if you still have a job but worry that you, too, could soon find yourself out of work. And who among us doesn’t harbor such fears these days?

Because the soaring unemployment rate has thrust so many people into the ranks of the suddenly uninsured, the government is scrambling to help. The economic stimulus package that President Obama just signed into law provides at least some temporary relief. For one thing, it will be easier and relatively less expensive for the newly unemployed to obtain health coverage under the 1986 law known by its acronym, Cobra.

And earlier this month, Congress passed legislation adding millions of children to those eligible for the Children’s Health Insurance Program — known as CHIP — which covers children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to afford private health insurance.

Read on, to see if Cobra and CHIP might be options for you and your family. If not, you’ll probably have to line up private insurance — a process you could start by comparison shopping at a Web site like eHealthInsurance.com.

As you weigh all your insurance options, while considering your or your family’s specific health needs, here are some things to keep in mind. And for further information see the list of resources that accompanies this column.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/health/policy/28patient.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

and have never held a job with insurance?

provide info. Just throwing this out there in case someone can learn something that might help them.

one. There are probably others that are more current.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/02/unemployed-stim.html


Unemployed? Stimulus plan has you (partly) covered**
4:23 PM, February 17, 2009

As the days wound down to final passage of the national stimulus bill, Booster Shots reported the tentative provisions that the package was expected to include on subsidies to those paying for COBRA, the health-insurance extension that many employers are required to offer to workers they have laid off for up to 18 months after their departure.

Now, the massive stimulus bill is making its way to President Obama's desk for his signature, which is expected Tuesday. And attorneys, human resources professionals and even a few out-of-work journalists are scouring the fine print for the details as they finally emerged.

Here are a few of the highlights, with thanks to Sibson Consulting, a New York-based HR consulting firm with an L.A. office on Wilshire Boulevard:

— You're eligible if you were laid off after Sept. 1, 2008 (an earlier version of this article reported that lay-offs following Sept. 30th would be eligible), or are laid off any time between Tuesday (when the bill is expected to become law) and Dec. 31, and if you worked for an employer required to offer you the option of extending your group healthcare coverage for 18 months (and under California law for 36 months), at 102% of the cost to the company.

You are not eligible if you made or will make more than $150,000 (individual) or $250,000 (joint return) in the year in which you would receive the subsidy. There's no proof of income required at the time you sign up. But if, once you have filed your taxes, you discover you earned too much to qualify, you will be required to repay the subsidy you've received.

— Starting with March 2009, the subsidy will pay 65% of your monthly COBRA bill directly to the employer (in the form of a payroll tax credit), once you have paid 35% of the bill. If you did not elect to continue your insurance coverage under COBRA — say, because the bill was too steep — your former employer is now required to give you another chance to sign up. If you did elect to buy the COBRA insurance and have been paying the full cost of the insurance, the subsidy is not retroactive (an earlier version of this article reported that it was). But if you have make your full COBRA payment for March (say, because of uncertainty about the COBRA subsidy program), your former employer must give you that subsidy either as a credit toward future COBRA payments, or as an outright refund if you are no longer enrolled (an earlier version of this posting indicated that the subsidy was retroactive to September; that is not the case).

— The subsidy ends after nine months — shorter than the 12 months that had been written into an earlier version of the bill.

— The stimulus bill also extended a COBRA subsidy program that had been part of the Trade Act of 2002 but had expired. This would give a 65% COBRA subsidy to any worker whose job was lost due to foreign trade competition and whose employer has applied for and been granted entry to the program.

All of these details (and doubtless many, many more) are to be posted and disseminated by the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Labor in the next 30 days. To get them, you'll want to check here over the next several weeks. Follow the link to Cobra Continuation Health Coverage FAQs, and all the answers to the questions the IRS and Department of Labor thought to ask should be there.

— Melissa Healy

We lost all of our coverage when the husband was laid off last June. So sounds like we're just SOL. We both have health issues that we're just having to try to deal with or ignore.

and her new job is only 30 hrs/wk so she's not eligible for insurance through her new job. Along with the fact that she's making $3/hr less puts a real crimp into our budget. At least I get my healthcare through the VA.

new job. For just the 2 of us it was over $800/month. I had no choice but to take it because of my pre-existing conditions - a break in coverage
means that my new insurance could refuse to cover that condition for the first year at my new job. If I get laid off of this job, I plan to take the COBRA just for me and find something else for my husband, who has no health problems (for the moment, anyway).

All of my kids are grown, but adding the 2 who were still in college would have made the payments for the COBRA over $1100/month. I can't imaginetrying to pay that on unemployment. I'm glad they took this into account in the stimulus bill. It still leaves out those who have been laid off before 09/08, which is a LOT of folks, I bet.

I truly hope that the shitbag Repubs are unable to hold up the healthcare reform we need so desperately in this country. :(

Nothing but pork. A gift to the insurance companies. What a disaster that Obama is. :sarcasm:

And employed for at least 25 of those. Middle class? yeah right.