WebCOBRA ARRA Letters and Schedule
Category: 2009 Stimulus
Topics: stimulus, webcobra
We have published a document describing the four ARRA Letters that WebCOBRA can produce:
- Renotification COBRA Election Packet
- ARRA Enrollment Form
- ARRA Open Enrollment Letter
- ARRA Enrollment Confirmation
WebCOBRA The document describes what letters can print in what scenario, and includes example letters, which you can modify.
WebCOBRA Install Schedule
We’re taking our time with the WebCOBRA install; we want to make sure it’s right and not just online. We are testing as fast as we can, and as carefully, to re-develop the release for ARRA under these ever-changing circumstances and will make it available to you as soon as is possible, probably by early next week.
One last point is that the DOL has confirmed that you have until April 17, 2009 (60 days after signing of the ARRA law) to send out the re-enrollment letters. While we certainly will have the new release to you well before that, at least you have the comfort of knowing that you are not “late” in sending out the notices of re-enrollment at this point in time.
17 Responses to “WebCOBRA ARRA Letters and Schedule”
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March 4th, 2009 at 07:14 PM
Please release the ARRA compliant WebCobra version as soon as possible. I support and commend your desire for the release to be right, but I want it be on time. I was reassured numerous times that Travis was on schedule for the March 1 release. As a Cobra TPA, we are responsible for providing ARRA notices for our clients, and we are committed to delivering the notices before the 04/17 deadline. Our goal is to begin sending notices by March 20 (15 business days after March 1). We will continue our work (finalizing notice, collecting all termination from new clients, etc) until the new release is available.
Perhaps WebCobra can make the updates available in stages: first releasing the update to provide notices and then releasing the update to validate eligibility, notify QB of eligibility, enroll, track, etc.
Thank you for hard work, Brooke
March 4th, 2009 at 09:08 PM
@Brooke: Would it help if we were to post the IWP templates early? You could begin to edit them, but you would not be able to actually create an ARRA letter until we upgrade the version.
You would, however, be able to view and edit the templates, making changes as you see fit. It may not be useful, but if it will be beneficial we can most likely make that happen.
March 5th, 2009 at 07:09 AM
I would very much like to have the templates as soon as you can post them in WebCobra.
March 5th, 2009 at 08:05 AM
@Jesse (from Brooke): I think this would be beneficial. We have 4,000 QB’s plus their dependents to notify, so we need all the help you can provide. I will continue to finalize our ARRA letter in Word, so we can copy/paste once the release is available.
Jesse: another question for you. We have a minimum of 1,000 QB’s plus their dependents to load to WebCobra before we print ARRA letters. We are migrating QB’s from a legacy system to WebCobra, and we took over administration for many new clients effective January 1st. These are “old” QBs who will need the ARRA Notice. We are notifying ALL QBs with a termination date equal to/greater than 09/01/2008. Most of these QBs will probably not qualify for the premium reduction, but we want to generate all ARRA letters from WebCobra.
Can we begin loading these QB records to WebCobra now? Or should we wait until the new release. I assume we can begin loading the records, and WebCobra will treat these QBs like any other QB in the system.
Thanks for your help, and I appreciate your hard work. I know you guys are working through this regulation just like us.
March 5th, 2009 at 08:27 AM
If I understood correctly the Wizard will generate notifications for QB’s with QE’s of termination or loss of coverage between 09/01/08 and 02/17/09. We have continued to add QB’s since 02/17/09 that will need to be re-notified. And we will continue to add QB’s up until the ARRA language is available. s it possible to make the “thru” date user defined?
Will their be a letter of denial for those QB’s who return the enrollment form and are determined to be ineligible?
March 5th, 2009 at 10:14 AM
@Brooke: you can load those QBs now, and the QBs with events from 9/1/2008 through 2/17/2009 will be re-notified when you run the wizard.
@Lyn: For those QBs with events after 2/17/2009, they don’t necessarily need an ARRA Renotification Packet. Most likely, you’ll want to schedule for them an ARRA Enrollment Form and you’ll do that through Manual Letters.
We are planning on adding an ARRA denial letter, but for now you’ll need to handle that in a Free Form letter or outside of WebCOBRA.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:18 PM
When we started with WebCOBRA, I modified the “reduced hours” event to say reduced hours/reduction of force and we use this for all our lay offs. Since most of those are involuntary, I assume many of those people will be eligible for the subsidy, but I see that the re-notification wizard will skip over those term codes. The process for me will then be that I have to identify those people and manually schedule the ARRA packet, correct?
March 5th, 2009 at 12:32 PM
@Renee: Yes, you will need to process those people manually.
this is new: In WebCOBRA, if a QB had a secondary event of any event type, but you entered the QB with a primary event of Termination (after 9/1/2008), it will renotify them. The QB may appear to be a Divorce event now, but if they had an underlying event of Termination, they’ll be notified. This should solve the concerns we’ve heard about needing to re-notify secondary event.s
March 5th, 2009 at 03:21 PM
I realize that QB’s with termination dates after 2/17/09 do not necessarily need a new complete ARRA notification. But we have to send them something. Please refresh my memory, or fuddled head, how do I identify QB’s with a termination or loss of coverage between 02/17/09 and the date we send the renotification package? By the time we start sending the ARRA information out we will have had several weeks worth ot terminations and loss of coverage events since 02/17/09.
March 5th, 2009 at 03:27 PM
If we use the ARRA enrollment form for currently enrolled QB’s, again, short of manually looking at every record, what report will give us their QE date?
March 5th, 2009 at 03:35 PM
@Lyn: I think that’s an excellent point. You could get close with the Ad Hoc report writer, or by sending the ARRA Enrollment Form to all Enrolled QBs.
We’ll look into adding a class in the WebCOBRA Manual Letter Wizard to select all ARRA Enrolled QBs (event date after 2/17/2009), which should ease that process.
March 5th, 2009 at 06:59 PM
Will the ARRA COBRA Election PAckage and the ARRA Enrollment Form appear on the Certificate of MAiling selection option?
March 6th, 2009 at 08:05 AM
@Lyn, the ARRA Enrollment Form will, along with the ARRA enrollment confirmation and the ARRA Open Enrollment Letter. The Cobra Election Notice will be in there as well, just not differentiated from existing Election Notices since it is the same letter with a different opening paragraph.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:09 AM
The DOL will be publishing “model” notices on or about March 20, 2009. Is there any reason to believe that these model notices will mandate additional changes in the COBRA notices?
March 6th, 2009 at 01:36 PM
@Kathleen: The last time the DOL came out with model notices we did have to update our notices, so based on that alone I would be surprised if we did not need to update. At the least we will likely need to add ARRA wording to the COBRA Election Notice.
March 9th, 2009 at 09:35 AM
Do you intend to add a new qualifying event type code? Something that, going forward, will identify those that are involuntarily terminated? Once we all get through the process of manually identifying the current QB’s in the system and re-notifying them it would be so helpful to have an event code of “Involuntary Termination” that would automatically apply the appropriate ARRA forms and letters. We are a TPA with multiple clients who enter online and multiple clients for whom we do entry online. In either case being able to identify, right at the entry of the QB record level, those involuntarily terminated and to have WebCOBRA generate the proper letter sets would be most helpful.
March 9th, 2009 at 09:55 AM
@Lisa: Once we get the updated model language from the DOL, we’ll update the regular QB add process if necessary. Please add your ideas to the IdeaBook for community voting.