Expiring insurance subsidy imperils laid-off Americans

[babylonsister]

Expiring insurance subsidy imperils laid-off Americans

By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — Just before Don Hall and his family left town for Thanksgiving, the laid-off manufacturing supervisor from Castalia, Ohio, wrote a $763.81 check to his health insurance company for his December payment.

He'd paid $237 in November, but the big increase wasn't due to rising health costs or a catastrophic illness — and it wasn't an isolated incident.

Hall, 56, is among an estimated 7 million unemployed Americans who get a federal subsidy to help them buy health insurance under legislation known as the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.

For workers who are laid off or downsized between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009, the COBRA subsidy pays 65 percent of their job-based health insurance premiums for nine months.

That subsidy, however, expires Monday for Hall and untold thousands of others who began receiving it in March, when it first became available as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Unless Congress moves swiftly to extend the benefit, millions of other jobless Americans will experience the same sticker shock when they exhaust their subsidies and must pay full health insurance premiums, instead of just 35 percent.

For many, the cost of coverage will triple, forcing cash-strapped unemployed workers to scramble for cheaper private coverage, go uninsured or suck it up like Hall and pay the higher rates.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/79636.html

[CherokeeDem]

1. I Qualified for the Subsidy....

and now my insurance is costing me $244 a month, not $764 and I am petrified that I won't have a job before it runs out. Fortunately, I just started with the subsidy so I have a while to go yet but it is still frightening. I hope that Congress will renew because no one can afford those premiums. It's outrageous.

[endless october]

2. my subsidy runs out in April.

hope i can find a job before then, because the COBRA rate is going to jump big time that month.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. I'll be facing that situation in March

If I don't have a job with benefits by then, I don't know what we'll do.

[Missy Vixen]

4. We qualified in March, my husband took a contract job in August

We can't afford the COBRA premiums ($960 per month,) so we now have no insurance.

We're not sure when we will have it again. After all, we can't get through underwriting by any stretch of the imagination...

:eyes:

Thanks, Congress and President Obama, for that "robust public option".

[babylonsister]

6. I lose all insurance in May. I hope there's a job out there with

my name on it.

[Missy Vixen]

7. I hope there is, too

I'll be crossing my fingers for you, babylonsister.

:hug:

[uberblonde]

5. I missed the subsidy by one month...

And have been paying since I was laid off. My COBRA option expires in February.