COBRA

meb

I have a couple of questions about COBRA. An employee is taking early retirement and has serious health problems. He wants to continue his health coverage indefinitely. First, is retirement a qualifiying event and second, assuming he pays the premiums, how long may he maintain the coverage?

AnaFL

Assuming that you are an employer that is subject to COBRA, then your employee is entitled to continuation of coverage under COBRA. The qualifying event will be retirement and this would fall under an 18-month event. So you would have to offer COBRA for a max of 18 months. Then if this employee becomes entitled to Medicare due to their age, (and under COBRA rules entitled means actual enrollment in either part A or part B, not merely eligibility), then the event would be a 36-month event. Typically, Medicare entitlement is a COBRA event in conjuction with an earlier 18 month event. If this is your employee's case, then the coverage would be for a total of 36 months, not 18 plus 36. If the employee is disabled under Title II or XVI of the SS Act, then there is a rule whereby the employee is entitled to an extension of the max period, up to 29 months of COBRA, but there are certain requirements, which are rather lengthy, so unless this is your case, I'll leave that out for now.

Hope this helps!

wire manufacturer

A couple more questions: Does the employee have to have a serious health condition to qualify for the 36 months? Does the employee have to become elgible for Medicare while on COBRA? What if he is 65 before retiring?