Incremental Approach to ARRA COBRA Administration
Category: 2009 Stimulus
Topics: arra
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.
The fact that the rules keep changing is certainly keeping us all on our toes. Details about domestic partners in subsidy calculations are just starting to emerge, along with a general need to revamp how TPA’s disburse the 35% premium they do collect and retain the 2% admin fee they have earned.
Travis Software has released 10 versions of TravisCobra since ARRA was passed, each incrementally improving on the last, and WebCOBRA has been updated 6 times with features, fixes, and improved ways of handling ARRA. Both COBRA Administration Systems are works in progress and are being continually updated with features our administrators are asking for on this blog, through our support line, and on the ideabook in an effort to provide the most feature-packed and best supported COBRA Administration system on the market.
Our main goal to date has been enabling administrators to re-notify potential participants of ARRA, create a workflow to enable or deny participants, and process the 65% government subsidy. Once the ARRA notification deadline passes, our attention will turn to efficiency, processing, and adding options to both the TravisCobra and WebCOBRA systems.
No one patch or hotfix is going to address all questions. No one can anticipate all new guidance that will come up in the next few weeks or months as the DOL and IRS have their say on how the premium reductions should be handled. Special cases will continue to pop up and we’ll continue to add new features to streamline COBRA processing.
We are all in this together, and please know that we at Travis understand the environment in which COBRA administrators find themselves, particularly in these stressful times. With our systems, we are striving to help you manage the tasks facing you in as timely a manner as possible.
19 Responses to “Incremental Approach to ARRA COBRA Administration”
Comments are closed for this article.
April 7th, 2009 at 08:17 PM
Thanks for this statement. It helps to take a deep breath once in a while and look at this from 30,000 feet.
April 7th, 2009 at 09:25 PM
I apprciate everything you all are doing, this is a stressful situation on all of us. I would like to ask that Web COBRA really look at the reports offered for the subsidy. Travis has said that everything that they feel is needed is there, but I do not understand how the report is supposed to work. If we are supposed to use the report to provide our clients with how much they can take off thier 941 taxes for the month the report will not be accurate if it pulls by what month they pay for, because If someone pays thier March premium in May, because they are just signing up it will reflect on the March invoice(if pulling by month)not May, so we have to keep going back to the March report find out who we already sent to our client and who we didnt. It would seem best if it pulled by what payments were made in the current month and next to it reflect what month it was for. Is Travis going to improve on this report any and soon, since we have to start providing them to our Clients ASAP to claim March.
April 8th, 2009 at 08:37 AM
I think you are doing a great job with the ever changing requirements. Thanks for providing timely updates. Keep up the great work and hopefully we can all rest soon!
April 8th, 2009 at 09:36 AM
@Adella: Any updated ARRA features you would like to see added or improved upon in the system, please post them to the Travis Ideabook at http://ideabook.travisoft.com.
April 8th, 2009 at 09:37 AM
@George: Thanks!
April 8th, 2009 at 10:48 AM
I really do appreciate all the work Travis has been doing on these updates. Having this blog is very helpful as I have been checking back quite often to read on updates or see if other are experiencing some of the same issues I have been. One of my main concerns is in regards to updating the State (under 20) module in TravisCOBRA. When I have asked in past blogs, I am told that it is in the works and to watch for a new release, but do you have a projected time frame on the state module release, I will have about 1000 letters that will re-print and I’m worried I won’t make the April 18th dealine to do so.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:52 AM
Thank you for all of your help through this very difficult time. We appreciate it and I am sure our clients appreciate it. Sarah and Jesse have been very helpful!!:-)
April 8th, 2009 at 12:32 PM
@Rose: Thank you!
April 8th, 2009 at 05:08 PM
When I read this, I realized you at Travis must be feeling more pressure than all of the rest of us. We are certainly grateful to you for all the work that has been done and certainly understand how quickly the rules have been changing. And I, for one, am certainly not any kind of a software developer but I do work with them constantly and I’m reminded of how much work behind the scenes goes into even one new button and function. Thank you. You guys and gals do a great job for us and you need to know it (even if we are thankless clients sometimes).
April 9th, 2009 at 06:16 AM
(TravisCOBRA) When I ran the re-notification process it seems that everything worked fine. I thought at training it was mentioned that we would have to manually run anyone who had a Q/E of 2/18/09. I am spots checking over thousands of letters and that doesn’t appear to be the case. Please advise.
April 9th, 2009 at 07:59 AM
We installed the newest version (dated 4/3/09) of COBRA and notices #72 and #73 still do not appear. Are we supposed to manually type these in?
April 9th, 2009 at 08:57 AM
Hi Everyone, I had put the reporting issue on the ideabook earlier this week. Please go to ideadbook and vote,as this report needs to be changed as Adella stated in her comment above. I also had a separate suggestion on ideabook to be able to sort the report by branch.
Thanks everyone and thanks to Travis for making all the changes we are requesting.
Sarah, can you give us some suggestions for handling Domestic Partners/Non QBs? We are struggling with this. I know you guys are working on a change, but how can we handle until that change is made. I am open to suggestions on this.
Thanks.
April 9th, 2009 at 09:25 AM
@Kathleen: Thanks!
April 9th, 2009 at 09:31 AM
@Demi: DOL notices 72 and 73 are in the system, but they are not editable in the COBRA letter writer.
April 9th, 2009 at 09:34 AM
@Jodi: We are currently working on how to handle Domestic Partners/Non QBs. As soon as we have more information on this, we’ll let you know!
April 9th, 2009 at 10:14 AM
@Rose: TravisCobra will re-notify any PQB that is not already ARRA eligible.
April 9th, 2009 at 01:14 PM
@Julie: ARRA state continuation is now available for TravisCobra.
April 9th, 2009 at 02:02 PM
we upload checks daily – the ARRA subsidy is being applied to all records where the payment is the first payment. We did not go into the action tab and apply the subsidy. When you go to the “Add screen” the next payment due is the full amount (as it should be). How do we fix this so that the first payment is not applied to the subsidy until after we check off that they are eligible for the subsidy by going into the action field?? Please help!!!
April 9th, 2009 at 03:13 PM
@Cara. Please contact Travis Support. We are unable to diagnose potential issues over the Blog.