Are Employee Assistance Programs subject to HIPAA and Cobra rules?

[Guest LCJOHNSON]

If EAP benefits are considered medical benefits, are they portable? Have smaller employers been receptive to this portability (from job to job and from job to home)? How are EAP "benefits" funded when they are subject to COBRA?

[Guest nac]

Our lawyers have told us that EAP is subject to COBRA. You can imagine how popular that made them with us.

Right now, we don't do a separate election for EAP; what we do is explain to a term employee that the EAP is available to them regardless of whether they take COBRA for medical or not. We don't charge them for it - it'd cost them something like $2.00 per month and it would be more trouble than it's worth to collect it. The EAP is agreeable to this situation as well.