subject: Cobra Health Insurance Extension [print this page] Cobra Health Insurance Extension
As of July 2010 the fate for the COBRA health insurance extension is still in limbo for 15 million people who were unemployed in May. The reason the extension has not been passed is due to the additional cost of around $8 billion.
Until a cost offset can be found in the tax reform bill to prevent an additional amount added to the budget, the provision for the extension has been pulled from the House Democrats version. The National Employment Law Project estimates that 1.2 million Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits by the end of June, along with the 15 million from May, if Congress fails to work out a deal on an extension of unemployment benefits.
Originally the law allowed a maximum of nine months of benefits. Congress expanded that coverage to 15 months last November. More than 2 million households are estimated to have participated by paying 35 percent of their monthly COBRA premiums. The government reimburses the insurance provider of the remaining 65 percent with a tax credit.
The extension is sponsored by Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) who offered an offset by proposing to eliminate the advance earned income tax credit. This tax credit allows low-income taxpayers to receive an early rebate. The provision would save an estimated $1.5 billion, leaving $2.6 billion in deficit spending.
Casey and Brown have scaled back their proposal, keeping the Nov. 30 deadline, but cutting the benefit window down to six months. The deadline for new enrollment arrived June 1 without the extension. It is estimated that 144,000 families will be prevented from receiving benefits each month until an agreement can be reached.
Another proposal made by GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) suggested the unemployment benefits be offered as a stand-alone package; however, it is unclear whether Democrats are willing to go along with this idea.
In the mean time, senate leaders have reached an agreement on another provision of the tax extenders bill: the Medicare doc fix. Democratic leaders believe that this victory would lend momentum to passage of the larger tax extenders bill, to which Casey and Brown hope to attach their COBRA amendment.
welcome to Insurances.net (https://www.insurances.net)
