COBRA General Notice

[Guest OSU]

The new regs require the insurance company name and contact information to be included in the general COBRA notice (sent to new enrollees of the plan).

My company offers employees numerous choices of medical, dental, and vision plans. Does anyone know if we can list all the insurance companies in the general notice, or do we have to customize the notice to each employees selections?

Thanks for any advice.

[oriecat]

Where does it require that? I will admit to not having read the regs yet (since I don't have to comply until 11/1/05). But just looking at the Model notice they provide, I don't see where they indicate it needs to be included. At the end you have to enter the name and contact info of the group health plan, but that should be the plan info, not the carrier info, I think.

[Guest OSU]

I just read the actual regs and I think you are right Oriecat. A COBRA newsletter indicated that the insurance co and contact info was required (as opposed to just requiring the plan admin contact info), but I think they were being overly cautious.

Thanks!

[Sandra Pearce]

The model General Notice provided in the final regulation reads: [Enter name of group health plan and name (or position), address and phone number of party or parties from whom information about the plan and COBRA continuation coverage can be obtained on request.]

We only have one plan and the employer company is the Plan Sponsor and Plan Administrator (self funded). If we had more than one option I believe as Plan Sponsor we could put the name of the employer sponsoring company down and the contact at the employer company. In my case that is me since I handle COBRA for our company.

Just a suggestion.