According to a new report by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), the federal subsidy to help laid-off American workers pay for continued health care through the COBRA program helped fewer individuals than expected. The report states this may be due in part because COBRA premiums remained unaffordable for many families even with the subsidy.
See this article for more details.
The Obama Administration used the extension and subsify to help employees already burdened by the economic slowdown to maintain access to health insurance. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) allowed individuals to receive a subsidy of percent of the premium for individuals who were covered under COBRA and who incurred an involuntary job loss between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009.
Congress made the subsidy available for up to nine months per individual. Then Congress extended the COBRA subsidy three times.
"The COBRA subsidies that became available in April 2009 do appear to have had an impact on the percentage of nonworkers with coverage through a former employer," said Paul Fronstin, director of EBRI's Health Research and Education Program. "But they appear to have assisted far fewer than the originally estimated 7 million individuals, Fronstin added."
In addition, Fronstin said these findings may provide some foreshadowing of the subsidies that will become available rlated to the Health Insurance Exchanges in 2014, and may mean the number of uninsured may not fall as much as predicted.
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