Health coverage: Coping with COBRA

What will I do for health insurance? When you lose your job it's one of the first questions that come to mind. The answer is often COBRA, the federal legislation with the bad acronym that can keep you afloat. But, as more people are discovering these days, it is no deal.

Basically, if you get health coverage from a business with 20 or more workers, COBRA allow you to continue that coverage for 18 months (36 months in some cases) if you're cut from that job. But you shoulder the costs and it's expensive.

There's also potential coverage with MinnesotaCare, but as MPR reporter Martin Moylan reported recently, the guidelines for MinnesotaCare are tight:

"For a family of three, for instance, household income can't exceed about $48,000 a year. Assets, except home and retirement funds, can't exceed $20,000. Even then, you can't get covered by MinnesotaCare unless you've gone without insurance for at least four months."

The federal stimulus law provides some COBRA relief, including a 65 percent cut in premiums for up to nine months. But that won't help people who couldn't afford COBRA when they got cut and decided to go without coverage.

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