COBRA subsidy to expire

WASHINGTON — Just before Don Hall and his family left town for Thanksgiving, the laid-off manufacturing supervisor from Castalia, Ohio, wrote a $763.81 check to his health insurance company for his December payment.

He had paid $237 in November, but the big increase wasn’t due to rising health care costs or a catastrophic illness — and it wasn’t an isolated incident.

Hall, 56, is among an estimated 7 million unemployed Americans who get a federal subsidy to help them buy health insurance under legislation known as the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.

For workers laid off or downsized between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009, the COBRA subsidy pays 65 percent of job-based health insurance premiums for nine months.

That subsidy, however, expires Monday for Hall and untold thousands of others who began receiving it in March.

Unless Congress moves swiftly to extend the benefit, millions of other jobless Americans will experience the same sticker shock when they exhaust their subsidies and must pay full health insurance premiums, instead of 35 percent.

For many, the cost of coverage will triple, forcing cash-strapped unemployed workers to scramble for cheaper private coverage, go uninsured or pay the higher rates.

With the subsidy, job-based coverage averages $398 per month for families and $144 for individuals, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Without it, premiums average $1,137 for a family and $410 for an individual.

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