You have a COBRA packet in front of you, the number on it is considerably larger than you expected, and there is a deadline somewhere in the small print. This page is about what that deadline actually is, and what else you can do inside it.
I am Scott Binsack, a licensed insurance producer, NPN 20492859.
Why the number is so big
The coverage did not get more expensive. The subsidy stopped.
While you were employed, your employer was paying a large share of that premium and you only ever saw your slice of it on a payslip. COBRA lets you keep the identical plan — same network, same deductible, same card — but now you pay the whole cost, and the plan may add an administrative charge, up to 102% of the total. For most people the jump is between two and five times what the payslip said.
The two clocks, and the one people miss
COBRA gives you at least 60 days to elect. Separately, losing job-based coverage opens a 60-day Special Enrollment Period on the marketplace — and that one can start up to 60 days before the coverage actually ends, if you know it is coming.
These two windows overlap, and that is the single most useful fact on this page. You do not have to choose COBRA to avoid being uninsured while you think. You can price COBRA against marketplace and privately underwritten coverage inside the same 60 days and then decide once, with all three numbers in front of you.
The trap is the other direction. If you elect COBRA and then want to leave it mid-stream because it is too expensive, voluntarily dropping it is generally not a qualifying event. You are usually waiting for open enrollment or for the COBRA period to run out naturally. Electing COBRA is easy to do and hard to undo.
How long it lasts
- 18 months — job loss, voluntary or not, and reduction of hours.
- 36 months — for a spouse or dependant after divorce, the death of the covered employee, or a child aging off the plan.
COBRA applies to group plans at employers with 20 or more employees. If your employer was smaller, you may not have a COBRA option at all — some states have their own continuation rules, and the marketplace window is open to you either way.
When COBRA is genuinely the right answer
It is not always the wrong one, and I will tell you when it is not.
Take COBRA if you are in the middle of a course of treatment and changing networks would interrupt it. Take it if you have already met most of a large deductible this year and starting over in January would cost more than the difference in premium. Take it if the gap you are bridging is short and the administrative simplicity is worth the money to you.
Do not take it by default, in week eight, because the deadline arrived and you never priced the alternatives. That is how most people end up on COBRA, and it is the expensive way to get there.
What to have when you call
- The date your employer coverage ends or ended
- The COBRA election deadline printed on the packet
- The monthly COBRA premium
- How much of this year’s deductible you have already met
- Your doctors, and your expected household income for the rest of the year
With those I can put the three real options side by side, usually on the same call. No fee — carriers pay the commission and it sits inside the premium whether you use a broker or not.
