Two Month COBRA Extension

This is what’s reportedly coming today:

Lawmakers expect to extend the deadline to file for jobless benefits and the COBRA health coverage subsidy by two months. As it stands now, the deadline to apply for federally paid unemployment benefits and for the 65% insurance subsidy is Dec. 31. It would also maintain the stimulus-funded $25 boost in unemployment benefits through February.

An extension buys time for the million workers who otherwise would lose their benefits in January. But two months?

That’s not as much as this editorial from a Florida newspaper calls for:

The White House rightly wants to extend the COBRA aid at least six months.

Congress should do so quickly, possibly by adding funds for the longer health insurance lifeline to job-growth legislation in the works, and make it retroactive to cover the gap.

Finding the money to prolong COBRA subsidies won’t be easy but should be done to help the increasing numbers of unemployed — including many in Florida — in the jobless recovery.

Or this one in Michigan:

Legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate to extend benefits. A bill from Rep. Joe Sestak, D-PA, would increase the subsidy six months for a maximum of 15 months and allow people who lose their jobs in the first six months of 2010 to receive the break — ending the aid at the end of that year. That’s reasonable in this economy. What’s not is expecting families scrambling to pay utilities, car payments and mortgages to pay full health-insurance premiums.

These workers in Illinois don’t get to write editorials, but, having lost their jobs when the plant they worked at shut down, here’s what they say:

Former workers hope that a hearing on Thursday in Chicago might grant them 60 days of severance pay.

There are worries now about the cost of health care getting even higher. That’s as a 65% tax subsidy for COBRA benefits is beginning to run out without an extension.

“Trying to stay healthy,” she said. “So that you don’t get sick and have to go to the doctor. No insurance? It’s scary — very, very scary.”

Outside the vacant plant, paychecks have vanished along with the health care. Displaced workers just can’t afford the cost.

Two months of extended COBRA benefits will be an actual lifesaver for a few people who otherwise wouldn’t get the care they needed during those two months. But it won’t last until the unemployment rate drops to a manageable level. Two months just means that in two months, we’ll have to have this fight again.