COBRA for Professional Students

[Guest Ira Hayes]

Ladies and Gentlemen, Florida has enacted a law effective October 1, 2008 about which there is little agreement among practitioners. What they do agree on is that sponsors of fully insured group health plans with a Florida situs must allow their covered employees to continue covering unmarried dependents without dependents of their own until age 30 as long as those unmarried dependents either reside in Florida or are students at accredited institutions of higher learning.

The age 30 mandate is further limited in that the unmarried dependents may not have any other healthcare coverage which includes Medicaid and Medicare. I would argue that the COBRA administrator should quote the same COBRA rate billed to a divorced spouse mandatorily or a domestic partner permissively as opposed to the single rate whichh has been the practice historically.

Please comment from the perspective of actuarial logic as there are no regulations on point to my knowledge.

[GBurns]

Why "quote the same COBRA rate billed to a divorced spouse mandatorily or a domestic partner permissively" ?

I also am not sure that I have seen (not that I have really looked) the sinlge rate being used for non-spouse dependents "historically".

I do not know why you think that actuarial logic is any more relevant than any other logic, but:

What happens if the premium tiers are Employee Only; Employee & Spouse; Family or something similar such as Employee & 1 Dependent; Employee and 2 Dependents etc ? Such tiering implies that there is a calculated amount for non-spouse dependents. So charging the Employee Only (Single) rate should be improper and actuarially questionable.