{"id":356,"date":"2009-02-28T11:06:05","date_gmt":"2009-02-28T16:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/?p=356"},"modified":"2009-03-02T22:16:55","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T03:16:55","slug":"five-fast-facts-for-employees-the-american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act-of-2009-and-cobra-continuation-health-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/2009\/02\/five-fast-facts-for-employees-the-american-recovery-and-reinvestment-act-of-2009-and-cobra-continuation-health-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Fast Facts for Employees: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and COBRA Continuation Health Coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Act) made changes to continuation health coverage under the <span style=\"color: #000000;\">Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, commonly known as COBRA. Here are five fast facts on the changes related to employees:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana;\">The law became effective February 17, 2009 and applies to qualifying events occurring after August 31, 2008 and before January 1, 2010.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana;\">Involuntarily separated workers who elected COBRA continuation health coverage are only required to pay thirty-five percent of the required premiums.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana;\">Eligible individuals who did not elect COBRA coverage because it was unaffordable have sixty days to elect COBRA coverage.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">The subsidy phases out for individuals with modified adjusted gross income over $125,000 and when modified adjusted gross income exceeds $145,000 individuals are no longer eligible. Those numbers increase to $250,000 and $290,000 for taxpayers filing joint returns.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana;\">The subsidy may last for up to nine months.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10pt; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana;\">Over the next several days, <a href=\"mailto:info@visionpayroll.com\" target=\"_blank\">Vision Payroll<\/a> will be posting additional articles on implementing the changes to COBRA continuation coverage required by the Act as well as other changes to payroll and HR by other sections of the Act. We\u2019re also planning a seminar on implementing these changes, so contact <a href=\"mailto:info@visionpayroll.com\" target=\"_blank\">Vision Payroll<\/a> if you\u2019d like to attend.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Act) made changes to continuation health coverage under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, commonly known as COBRA. Here are five fast facts on the changes related to employees: The law became effective February 17, 2009 and applies to qualifying events occurring after August [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[801,795,545,548],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.visionpayroll.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}