Travis Software Official Blog

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.

Texas State Continuation Laws

Prior to SB 1771, Texas had a Mini-COBRA law that gave 6 months of coverage under State Law to insured groups in the state. This applied to both Federal and State Coverage, so in a Federal example, a QB would have 18 months of coverage for a medical plan under COBRA, and then 6 months of coverage under TX law.

SB 1771 contains several items worth noting:

• Extends from 6 months to 9 months the Mini-COBRA State continuation.
• Federal Extended Continuation remains unchanged at 6 months.
• Enrollment Period extends to 60 days.
• Requiring payment in advance for TX Mini-COBRA was removed; standard COBRA grace periods now apply.

There is also a notification window, much like the ARRA Re-Enrollment period, specified in the bill. Participants who could have taken advantage of the extra 3 months of coverage, but who terminated, will be allowed to re-enroll into MiniCOBRA.

You can read more about the bill at:

• Bill Text
• Texas Department of Insurance: ARRA
• Center for Public Policy Fact Sheet
• History of SB 1771

Our Plans for TravisCobra and WebCOBRA

Our systems have been modified to allow new events for under-20 groups to get both the 60 day enrollment window and 3 extra months of coverage.

New Election Period Workflow

For the notification period, we recommend the following workflow:

1. Compiling a list of participants who were involuntarily terminated who terminated for reasons other than hitting the 6 month maximum period, such as non payment, from TX State Continuation from 4/19/2009 through 7/19/2009.
2. You then add those QBs as new events with their original event date to the system with a prior-paid activity of their last paid date and mark them as ARRA Eligible.
3. The system will give them the forms they need, and you can include additional wording as necessary.

Software Availability

This features is available now! WebCOBRA was uploaded through a hotfix on 8/9/2009 without any interference on the part of the user.

TravisCobra version 8.4.0.09 is available now. A release email was sent to you with the FTP location to download this latest patch.