Health Insurance Coverage Is A Critical Form Of Financial Protection

Health insurance coverage is important for everyone; especially for someone who has just left employment. For those who are currently unemployed or planning to leave their jobs should check if they are covered under the provisions of COBRA. What is COBRA and what are my rights and my options? The U.S. Congress passed the significant Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) health benefit provisions in 1986. Firstly, COBRA can only be offered to employees and or their dependents if the employer has 20 or more employees. A part-time employee cannot be legally kept on this kind of health insurance coverage unless he or she becomes qualified for COBRA benefits.

The Benefits Of COBRA Health Insurance Coverage

The employee and or his dependents can only stay on the past employers health insurance coverage plan for up to 18 months unless the employee was released due to a disability. In the case of a disability, the employee can stay on the plan for up to 29 months on the health insurance coverage. In the case of an employee's death, legal separation, divorce or separation, or if the spouse becomes entitled to Medicare, the spouse and dependant children are entitled to 36 months of coverage. If a dependant child looses dependant child status, he or she would also be eligible for 36 months of continued coverage. The down side to the COBRA option is that if you develop a medical condition while on the plan, you may not be able to get the individual plan of your choice.

Group health coverage for COBRA participants is usually more expensive than health coverage for active employees, since usually the employer pays a part of the premium for active employees while COBRA participants generally pay the entire premium themselves. It is ordinarily less expensive, though, than individual health coverage.

Getting COBRA Health Insurance Coverage

From a practical point of view, you should ask yourself if you should continue COBRA the health insurance coverage option. If you or your family members have major health issues then, the answer is 'yes'. If you and your family members are relatively healthy then you will probably want to compare individual health insurance coverage plans at individual rates. These can be approximately half the cost of a comparable COBRA group health insurance coverage premium. One major difference between individual health plans and group health plans is that with the former you usually have to pay extra to receive maternity coverage whereas for the latter maternity coverage is often included.

COBRA struggled to get approved in the legislative House of Representatives. Eventually COBRA was passed into law and it has helped hundreds of people around the country. Actually, not everyone would agree that COBRA is the best legal protection for health insurance coverage beneficiaries; but it has done the work it's intended to serve and will continue to do so for many more years to come.

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