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Member, Beacon International Group, Ltd.
WASHINGTON—An estimated 500,000 employees expected to be laid off this month will be ineligible for the COBRA health insurance premium subsidy unless Congress extends the law, the U.S. Labor Department has said.
In all, the Labor Department said Monday that 5 million people who lose their jobs this year would lose the 15-month, 65% federal premium subsidy. “If the extension is not approved immediately, millions of Americans could lose the safety-net programs they deserve and desperately need,” Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis said in a statement.
Without an extension, employees let go on or after March 1 are ineligible for the subsidy.
The House of Representatives last week passed a stopgap extension through March 31, but Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., has blocked the Senate from voting on the measure, which also would temporarily extend other expiring federal programs, including the National Flood Insurance Program. Sen. Bunning said he does not oppose a COBRA extension, but is against the broader bill, H.R. 4691, because legislators, he says, have not found a way to pay for the costs of the legislation.
“When 100 senators are for a bill but can't fund $10 billion to pay for it, there's something the matter, seriously the matter, with this body,” Sen. Bunning said last week on the Senate floor.
Aside from the House stopgap measure, the Senate is considering a proposal by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., to extend the subsidy by 10 months so that employees laid off through Dec. 31 would be eligible.
Their proposal is in the form of a substitute amendment to an unrelated bill, H.R. 4213, which has already been passed by the House.