As many of us well know, COBRA requires employers to offer a continuation of insurance coverage for laid-off employees. The continuation of benefits lasts for a period of 18 months, and typically employees would be responsible for the entirety of its cost. However, the COBRA subsidy program, which pays 65% of the cost for a period of 9 months, was introduced this last year to ease the financial burden of maintaining health care. For many, this subsidy will be expiring, and a new bill has been introduced into the Senate and House to expand the benefit period to 15 months.

Recently, this proposal was passed by the House, and is expected to be voted on by the Senate in the near future. This proposal is aligned with the defense appropriations and job creation bills.

What I want to stress in this piece is that COBRA is a temporary solution to acquiring health insurance. People have the ability to take control of their health insurance by purchasing an individual health insurance policy that is portable, and a policy they can own. Individual policies offer benefits extremely similar to group insurance; namely, copays, preventive care, prescriptions drugs- and often at a fraction of the cost of your group insurance.

Take control of your health insurance, and speak with one of our Advisors today.