COBRA disclosure when no loss of coverage occurs

[Guest jy12443]

If a plan provides for the continuation of healthcare coverage for employees who experience a COBRA qualifying event for the duration of the applicable maximum coverage period (for example, an employee who terminates employment would continue coverage for 18 months following the termination date with employer paying the premums)- thereby not having an obligation to offer COBRA since the event didn't result in a loss of coverage prior to the end of COBRA's maximum coveage period - Should the plans' SPD still provide information on COBRA coverage since it is a group health plan or can it be silent on the COBRA issue. Please assume that the plan would be drafted to account for all COBRA scenerios, divorce, disability, etc. and extend coverage to the participant/dependents accordingly. Also kindly assume that the plan cannot be talked out of doing it this way! Any comments would be appreciated.

[oriecat]

My personal opinion only here - if you want to do something like this, you should still follow the COBRA notice procedures as required. You could then have a policy that says if someone elects their COBRA, that the company will pay for it. Or I guess your COBRA rate chart would just show a rate of $0 per month. First off, what if someone doesn't want the coverage, because they have other? You don't want to be paying for them to be covered if they don't want it, so you need to make sure they elect it. And then you also don't want to get into a situation where someone can finagle 18 additional months by saying they were never put on COBRA.

Also if in the future, the company decides to stop doing this, it would be a lot easier to just publish new COBRA rates than to redo the SPDs and everything.

[Guest jy12443]

Thanks for the reply. This would be for an EAP plan (counseling sessions); so it is probably unlikely that someone would want to elect this coverage after leaving the company. I'm sure employees would be surprised that the program is even eligible for COBRA in the first place!