Laid-off workers offered health plan

Uncle Sam taketh this month, but he also giveth, if you're quick about it, and if you've been laid off from a small business and you can afford your share of the premium for the medical insurance plan you lost when you lost your job.

Laid-off workers here and across the country who didn't sign up to continue their medical-insurance plan through the federal COBRA plan have a second chance to enroll, plus they can have 65 percent of the premium paid by the federal economic-stimulus package.

The deal has lots of catches, the chief one being that to be considered, a worker must contact their former employer or the medical insurer of the workplace plan by this Saturday. Workers targeted by the subsidy must be able to shoulder 35 percent of the premium, or about what they were paying when they were covered by the plan offered at work. The subsidy is available for as long as nine months or until work and a company plan can be found again.

Amy Turner, a senior employment-law administrator with the U.S. Department of Labor, said Thursday that the intent was to do something to help the estimated 7 million people nationwide who have lost their jobs due to the recession stave off the potential financial catastrophe of an anticipated serious illness.

The plan specifically targets workers of companies with fewer than 20 employees and who were laid off beginning in September and those who will lose their jobs between now and the end of this year.

Utahns have access to the subsidy through Utah's so-called mini-COBRA act. Utah is one of four states that in the past month or so adopted changes to state insurance law to allow laid-off workers who didn't sign up for COBRA to have a second chance to enroll.

The mini-COBRA changes were part of a package of health-care reform bills approved by Utah lawmakers on the final day of the legislative session three weeks ago. It lays the groundwork for a number of new state-agency and private-market changes, including more access to health insurance in general and making coverage less vulnerable to the whims of the economy.

Utah and the other states, which previously provided only three or six months of continued coverage, will now provide at least nine months of coverage for people who lost or will lose jobs between September 2008 and December 2009, said Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy for Families USA, a national health-policy-research and consumer-advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.