Health Plan Premiums

[Guest Joe D]

Considering a policy to restore benefits to employees coming back w/in 6 months of leaving the company. One suggestion that has come up is if, when they left, they went on our COBRA plan - paying the higher premiums - and then when they came back w/in 6 mos, we immediately began charging only the employee level premiums for their coverage.

However, if they weren't on our COBRA plan, they would be subject to our standard waiting period (less than 2 months) before being covered. Other than premiums, our COBRA plan is identical to our employee plan. Since the differential treatment is based on whether or not they took our COBRA, and not necessarily on a health condition I'm thinking there probably isn't a problem with this.

Does anyone see an issue with this? Thanks.

[Guest taylorjeff]

I think you can do it, but don't understand why you want to complicate a rehire provision with whether or not they took COBRA. Decide what you want for a rehire provision, and go with that. I would think it pretty common to waive the waiting period for employees returning within 6 months.

Considering a policy to restore benefits to employees coming back w/in 6 months of leaving the company. One suggestion that has come up is if, when they left, they went on our COBRA plan - paying the higher premiums - and then when they came back w/in 6 mos, we immediately began charging only the employee level premiums for their coverage.

However, if they weren't on our COBRA plan, they would be subject to our standard waiting period (less than 2 months) before being covered. Other than premiums, our COBRA plan is identical to our employee plan. Since the differential treatment is based on whether or not they took our COBRA, and not necessarily on a health condition I'm thinking there probably isn't a problem with this.

Does anyone see an issue with this? Thanks.

[Guest jrzgrl]

At my last job we allowed someone to be rehired within a year to be able to forgo the waiting period. COBRA had nothing to do with it.

[leevena]

My initial reaction is to say not to do this. I have two comments about why I would not recommend doing this.

The first is you are adding a level of complexity to your administration for rehires. Someone has to check and make sure the rehire took cobra. Then, where do you draw the line? What if someone took cobra for less than the six months, say for 3. How would you classifiy that? Or, what if an cobra eligible employee indicated that they wanted cobra, waited till the last minute to pay, and then was rehired. Was that employee on cobra? My point is you are opening yourself up for some tough situations.

The second comment is why would you reward the cobra employee? The average cobra member incurs more claims than an active employee. Also, depending on your type of health plan (self-funded, insured etc.) having more cobra on your plan is actually a negative. So you want to reward people who cost you, but the other rehires who did not cost you, you penalize.

Hope this helps.