MINOR CHILD'S HEALTHCARE COVERAGE

Ethel

We have a divorced employee who has been covering his minor child under our health plan. This coverage was voluntary, not part of the divorce. He is now dropping this child from our plan durning our open enrollment period. Question is, do we need to COBRA the child? My concern is that the mother know that the child's coverage is being dropped.

What would you do?

Whatever

Send the Cobra letter to the address on record for this dependent.

bamahr

I had the same problem - I elected to send the letter. I also was afraid the other parent would not be aware that the child had no coverage.

HRMaiden

I don't believe that the reason the child is losing coverage is due to a qualifying event, therefore COBRA would not be applicable and, at the risk of sounding harsh, I would not want to keep someone on our plan who does not belong on our plan. Keeping unnecessary people on our health insurance plan may only serve to drive the premiums up for those who do belong on the plan. However, I would send a letter to the custodial parent informing them of the fact that coverage is being terminated for the child so that parent could search out alternative health care coverage.

Ethel

You are right there is no QE under COBRA. But, if the custodial parent does not know the coverage has been cancelled and the child has an unforseen illness or accident -- A. There would be an attorney out there that would come after us for negligence if only for the "green mail" monies and B. I considered it more of a notification because since we handle his child support payments, I know that the custodial parent could not pay COBRA premiums. I do not feel that:

a. I should keep people on our plan who are not entitled and

b. that children of a divorced marriage should pay for their parent's stupid and/or selfish actions.

SMace

You don't want to kick off the healthy people, only the sick ones. x;-)

irenesmsaclaims

If you're thinking about offering continuation, even though you don't have to under COBRA, I would check the policy or plan document for dependent eligibility. If the child is not eligible as a dependent of your employee, a big claim could prompt the insuror or stop-loss carrier to check and claims could be denied for ineligibility. Then you may be liable.

Ethel

Since all I want to give is notification of termination of benefits but not extend coverage, I'm thinking that just having our TPA send out HIPPA Certs of coverage will serve this purpose and suffice. Any thoughts on that?

LindaS

I would not offer COBRA and the HIPAA certificate should be generated automatically when coverage is cancelled but you may want to send an informational letter informing the parent of the cancellation anyway. The HIPAA certificate may take a couple of weeks to generate and the letter would provide the parent with the information immediately.