Travis Software Official Blog

On March 2, 1010, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“ARRA”) was amended by the Temporary Extension Act of 2010 (H.R. 4691) (the “Act”) which, among other things, extends eligibility for the COBRA premium subsidy through March 31, 2010. The Act also includes a measure that extends premium assistance to eligible individuals that had or have a reduction of hours between September 1, 2008 and March 31, 2010 but did not elect COBRA coverage due to that qualifying event, and that later incur an involuntary termination of employment on or after March 2, 2010. Plan Administrators have new election period and notice responsibilities for such individuals.

• Unless Congress acts, the last ARRA-eligible qualifying events are coming soon and WebCOBRA.com has been modified to ensure that you can successfully administer this transition. A new letter named ARRA Subsidy Termination Notice has been added to WebCOBRA.com and can be accessed in the Internet Word Processor for those customers that would like to customize the letter. This letter automatically generates when an AEI’s ARRA subsidy is within 30 days of the final month of benefit (the 9th month of his/her ARRA subsidy). The ARRA Subsidy Termination Notice will also inform the Qualified Beneficiary of their total COBRA premium without the ARRA subsidy.

With this most recent release of Travis Cobra our customers can expect the following added functionalities:

Thanks to a recommendation from Sheffield Olson McQueen, one of our TPA customers whose clients have received audit notices from the IRS about ARRA subsidy audits, a new ARRA Audit Report can be found in WebCOBRA’s Report module. The report will list all ARRA receipents and all applicable premiums, subsidies, and payment totals to make IRS auditing a little easier. The report is fashioned in accordance with the information requested by the IRS for ARRA premium subsidy audits.

You can begin using this report as soon as October 14, 2009 in WebCOBRA, a sample is shown below:

Ironic, isn’t it, that the ARRA changes to COBRA, which represent the most significant amendments to the COBRA law since its original enactment in 1986, are temporary. At least they may be temporary.

Travis Software’s system developers continue to work to further refine the ARRA modifications we first put in place for TravisCobra and WebCOBRA.com last February. Improvements such as changing the ARRA Premium Reduction report, making it easier for you to change a QB’s AEI status and further standardizing disbursement reporting are all scheduled to be released soon for both TravisCobra and WebCOBRA.com.

Texas State Law has been modified for under-20 groups, effective 7/19/2009. State Bill 1771 was enacted and seeks to allow under-20 insured groups, otherwise known as Mini-COBRA, to take full advantage of the 2009 ARRA COBRA Subsidy.

Updated: 8/12/2009 – changed to reflect availability in the TravisCobra and WebCOBRA.com systems.

Today marks the 100th day since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was signed, enacting what proved to be the largest change to COBRA regulations in recent history. Below, tell us your ARRA story and answer a quick poll about COBRA participation.

WebCOBRA.com has always allowed you to disburse payment and premium amounts to Sponsor/Carriers or Client/Employers with the easy-to-use Premium Disbursement wizard.

Now, this process just got a little easier with the two new Premium Disbursement options that were recently added to your WebCOBRA.com system. Both of these new options will allow you to either include or exclude subsidy amounts in disbursement calculations and reports.

The Plan Exclusion feature, which was originally discussed here, will allow you to exclude domestic partners and other ineligible dependents from receiving the 65% ARRA subsidy. This feature was released as a part of our continuing effort to update the WebCOBRA.com system so that you can administer ARRA subsidies more efficiently than ever!

TravisCobra 8.3.0.15 was released today, April 28, and includes an ARRA Exclusion enhancement, originally discussed here, that will allow you to exclude domestic partners and other ineligible dependents from receiving the 65% ARRA subsidy. This is just the latest feature that has been added to the TravisCobra system to help you administer the new ARRA COBRA regulations.

We have finalized our plans to enable administrators to exclude the 65% government subsidy enabled by ARRA in both TravisCobra and WebCOBRA to domestic partners and other ineligible dependents.

• Ability to allow ARRA for Non-Core benefit plans.
• Ability to allow ARRA for State Continuation PQBs.

If you are using TravisCobra and you want to reprint ARRA notices, you can follow the steps below.

For a Group of PQBs:

If you are using WebCOBRA and you want to reprint ARRA notices, you can follow the steps below.

For a group of QBs:

When ARRA was passed nearly two months ago, on February 17th, we had a fairly good idea of how to construct our administration systems to deal with ARRA. Then, the DOL issued guidance, and the IRS also had their input into the matter. During this tumultuous time, the two-month period for getting the ARRA Re-notification letters out loomed on the horizon with no extension.