Word: cobra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...those patients in the middle - Medicare patients like Ira and Tony, the younger HMO types doing well but working harder and harder, the aging professionals dealing with their first serious pains - they seem to be of a new mind lately. So do the unemployed who foresee the day their COBRA benefits will end, and the still fully employed whose company plans in 2010 entail higher deductibles, higher copays and reduced benefits. Whatever their situation, these patients are less interested in therapy and anti-inflammatories, or in just waiting to see if the pain stops by itself. (Quite often it does...
With the job outlook grim, unemployed workers received an unexpected boost this week as President Obama signed legislation authorizing a six-month extension of the COBRA health care subsidy program that was part of the economic stimulus bill passed in February. "That makes me pretty happy," says Don Hall, 56, who lives outside Sandusky, Ohio. A supervisor with an MBA at an automotive parts supplier to Ford Motor Company, Hall was laid off in October 2008. He recently sent a letter of hardship to Wells Fargo to try to save his house from foreclosure. His subsidized COBRA payment has been...
...millions of laid-off workers and their families, the federal COBRA subsidies have been a health-coverage lifeline," says Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a non-profit organization for health care consumers.(See the 5 things that the House and Senate have to iron out on Health Care...
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the federal subsidies pay 65% of the cost of COBRA premiums. Originally, the subsidy was to expire after nine months and unemployed families would have seen their health care premiums spike on average from $389 to $1,111 per month. This tripling of cost could have caused many families to drop their health care coverage just as Congress is on the cusp of passing the most far-reaching health care reform legislation in history. (See the Cheapskate blogger on COBRA...
...three weeks or we adopt it in January, we need to make sure it'll work." Either way, the Senate cannot pass a comprehensive bill until next year given the current preoccupation with health care. But some of the provisions, such as unemployment insurance, food stamps and COBRA, must pass before they expire at the end of the year...