Heh, I posted in another thread that my daughter’s COBRA payment for herself and her infant daughter was $1700 per month in the interim when she changed jobs*. I mentioned that was ridiculous as it was more than a mortgage payment. Bricker, kindly came in and told me that $1700/month was a silly number for a mortgage payment, it should be $3400 a month, so I guess the COBRA insurance payment was actually supposed to be a real deal for her.
*Note: she was never unemployed. She left one job on Friday and started the next job on Monday but her new insurance didn’t take effect for 30 days. Oh, and she is a PhD Psychologist, not one of the “undeserving” trying to take advantage of the system.
The subsidy is part of the stimulus package and was designed to soften the blow of COBRA costs for people who’s loss of employment was involuntary.
There are two issues that I have and believe it or not, the financial burden of the $340 additional cost for my partner’s coverage is not one of them. That is a cost I’m willing to pay, even though it is unfair compared to heterosexual married couples in the same situation, for the safety and well-being of my family.
My issue with my former employer is simply that they should have known and should not have sent me boiler-plate forms that did not apply to me and my family. It set the wrong expectations at a time in our lives when major decisions were being made. Decisions such as…
What is our monthly budget?
How much can we afford to pay in rent when we move?
Should I take work as an independent contractor or keep looking for another job with full benefits?
Should my partner set aside her music and her online classes and the business we are trying to build and try to find a job with full benefits instead?
We may very well have made different decisions and made different commitments if my employer had provided us with accurate information. Accurate information that other benefit administrators are clearly already aware of per the link in my OP. But now I have signed contracts as an independent contractor. She has enrolled in classes and paid tuition. We have already moved into a rental house.
My issue with my former employer is about communication and trust. I trusted the information they provided me to ‘navigate this time of transition’ to actually help me navigate in my time of transition and not lead me astray.
The big beef I have is with DOMA, and how its existence functionally removes my partner’s ability to “make an election to exercise [her] right” for many things, of which some stimulus money that we qualify for in all ways except for what we do in the bedroom is but a small piece.
COBRA is exactly the same cost as the insurance already cost, the employer just isn’t paying a portion anymore. The insurer has the option of adding a 2% administrative fee, but not all do that. I know a couple that have a flat fee of like $2.
DOMA is costing us something similar, for different reasons (immigration / visas). I feel your pain. We’ve struggled for years and have decided to vote with our feet, though that’s not a practical option for most couples.
Two years ago, Husband quit his shit job to go back to school. His school was too small to have a student health option, my school didn’t cover spouses, and, due to incredibly mild asthma, private insurance was way expensive. So, COBRA. $350 of arterial blood every month. Six months in, we are notified that because Shit ex-Employer had lapsed on their health coverage payments, the plan had been canceled, effective 3 months retroactively. Even though he quit half a year before, his COBRA coverage still counted as that canceled group plan. So, now not only out insurance, but way past the magic “no lapse in coverage for more than 30 days” required to discount pre-existing conditions. Now that asthma wasn’t just expensive, it was exclusionary. We were only able to find coverage thanks to a weird loophole present only through Kaiser and only in California and only because the Husband is a stickler for licensing paperwork.
COBRA may not be evil, but they are a sign of a broken system.
Whatever you may think about the COBRA subsidy as a wise social policy, the OP makes two very good points. First, the government should not be n the business of making distinctions like this based on sexual orientation. The problem here is not that a subsidy exists, but that it’s awarded on such a capricious basis.
Secondly, and lost in all the shouting, is her complaint about her former employer. Even if the government had decreed that left-handed, red-headed Cubs fans may be treated differently for COBRA subsidy purposes, a company on its game would have said to her during the exit interview, “You’re not by chance a Cubs fan, are you? Because there’s this odd little policy…”
[hijack – I hope that neither the OP nor Dr Drake mind]
I remember your thread from a few years back, pitting your Immigration Attorney. I can only imagine how many hundreds of hours you have spent trying to get everything to work in the US before deciding to “vote with your feet”. It will be a loss to the US, but a gain for … presumably the UK? Oh well, at least you will be closer to the source material of your Celtic languages and folklore research.
If your destination is the UK, I hope that you find the immigration system more amenable than that of the US. Do the UK’s immigration laws allow equal sponsorship for same-sex and opposite-sex spouses? [/hijack]
Thanks! We’re going to Canada. Both Canada and the UK allow same-sex immigration and of course their health care systems are different than the one facing ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies. I don’t want to hijack the thread with my issues, especially since half the pitting is to CttDSWHC’s ignorant former employer.
It isn’t an actual tax, but a policy by which people who are not legally married in the eyes of the federal government have to pay more for the same coverage that people who are legally married in the eyes of the federal government receive for less.
Since the legislation does not recognize gay marriage, gay folks cannot possibly qualify for the married people benefits. Exclude gays and those ‘living in sin.’ Two-for-one discrimination!
(And **ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies **it may not be worth the hassle, but since you have documentation that your idiot company said “This will cost $X,” can you make them pick up the slack? In a consumer setting that would be called bait and switch pretty quickly.)
I’ll be happy if they just update the forms so that other people don’t run into the same problem. It is one mar on an otherwise generous severance package that included paying for the first 2 months of our combined COBRA premiums. Unfortunately, that had the effect of just delaying the reality check for 2 more months. Either my former employer or SHPS (the benefit administrators they outsource to) should have told us, in writing, that my partner’s part of the application for the subsidy had been rejected, and why, before anyone was was billed for any COBRA premiums.
This is just to nuts… come to Europe, you can fuck and suck whatever and whoever you want (given it’s consentual and not underage, unless you are as well) - it won’t change your health insurance… yes, I know it’s so restrictive here and we are all faggots…