Travis Software Official Blog

In the past year, many submissions from the Travis Ideabook have made their way into our Travis Systems! Every year we add new features to our Travis products, and many of them come from you, our Travis Customers.

The following document will discuss how to import the ARRA Model Notice into the Letter Writer for Letters 79 – 81.

States are continuing to enact legislation affecting State Continuation and Mini Cobra and to support our customers we updated our software in preparation. The following States have changed their coverage options:

Illinois

Illinois mini cobra has been extended to 12 months of continuous coverage from the FDLOC for events such as Termination and Reduced hours.

Oregon

Oregon mini cobra and State Continuation enhancements have been implemented for events occurring between 09/01/2008 – 12/31/2009. Mini Cobra for Oregon will now offer 9 months of coverage from the FDLOC for the following events:

• Termination- 31 day election period

• dependents loss of coverage due to employees death – 60 day election window, 45 day payment grace

• divorce – 60 day election window, 45 day payment grace

Ohio

Ohio Mini Cobra have also decided to offer a 12 month coverage period from the FDLOC for the following event that occurred between 04/01/2009 – 12/31/2009.

• Termination- 31 day election period

Virginia

Virginia State QB’s enrolled in State Mini cobra are now eligible to receive a total of 9 months coverage period from the FDLOC for events occurring between 09/01/2008 – 12/31/2009.

• Termination- 60 day election period

To inquire about any of these State mandated changes please refer to each State’s Insurance website or find out who to contact at this site.

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.

As we are sure you are aware, two COBRA State Continuation Laws have recently been signed into law for Pennsylvania and Utah, and we wanted to let you know that we have analyzed the laws and are currently working on adding capabilities to both the TravisCobra and WebCOBRA.com systems in order to help you administer your under-20 groups in those states.

One question that we have heard is, ‘Are you going to continue to support TravisCobra?’ The answer is resoundingly YES!

TravisCobra, and its DOS predecessor, has been running smoothly for 23 years and has a devoted user base. We believe in client hosted COBRA software, and we’ll be supporting it for years and years to come.

Two new ARRA reporting capabilities have been added to the TravisCobra system within the past week, and we wanted to make sure that you know about them!

Having two ARRA reports that deal with payments may seem like overkill; however, the two reports are necessary. In one instance you may want to look at all ARRA premiums in a month, but you also may want to see all payments that affect ARRA subsidies in that month. We can now let you slice the data both ways.

One of the major benefits of always keeping your TravisCobra system up-to-date with the latest features and fixes is that you are guaranteed to always have the latest and greatest COBRA administration features, but there’s another benefit that you may not have thought about: a faster and easier updating process!

We have seen users not update their systems because they think it will take too long or be too much of a hassle, and, in reality, the opposite is true. Every time you run a Patch on your TravisCobra data, not only do you download new features, but you also fix existing issues you may or may not be aware of. The moral of the story is, the more often you update, the less time you’ll spend upgrading.

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.

• 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:

This weekend we will be releasing yet another update to the WebCOBRA and TravisCobra systems as part of our continuing effort for ARRA administration.

This weekend we will be releasing an update to both TravisCobra and WebCOBRA as part of our continuing effort for ARRA administration. The administration tools we are providing are inspired by our users, our own ideas, and guidance from government administration agencies like the DOL and IRS.

TravisCobra and WebCOBRA have been enhanced with the following two major features:

1. Include DOL Model Notice Forms
2. ARRA Denial Letter

On March 19, 2009, the DOL issued model notices for COBRA as required by the 2009 Stimulus package (ARRA). Both TravisCobra and WebCOBRA have been producing letters as detailed by the final bill’s language. The DOL Model Notices are a formalization of our community of users’ beliefs as to how WebCOBRA and TravisCobra should function.

Here are the two changes we will be making to TravisCobra and WebCOBRA within the next week: