COBRA Automatic Enrollment - Permissible?

[Guest SBM]

Can an employer automatically enroll terminated employees in COBRA?

The employer wants to automatically enroll severed employees - the employer will pay for the COBRA coverage for a limited period. At the end of the period, participants could either opt-out or just not pay for continued coverage (at which point, the COBRA coverage would terminate).

The employer's COBRA vendor has said they do this frequently with other clients, I can find no authority to permit this.

Thank you in advance for any help!

[QDROphile]

At one time there was a provision in the tax regulations that spoke to the ability of anyone to pay the COBRA premium for someone, leading to a fantasy scenario that a hospital treating an uninsured person could discover that the person was still eligible for COBRA coverage. The hospital could pay the premium to gain the coverage for the person and have insurance pay for the some portion of the cost of care, which would be much higher than the cost of the premium and a better recovery than the hospital could exepct to get any other way.

Do you need authority to permit it?