
Shana Alex Lavarreda, the Center's director of health insurance studies and the co-author of the new policy brief Number of Uninsured Jumped to More Than Eight Million from 2007 to 2009, talks about the role of COBRA, public insurance and health care reform in addressing California's uninsurance crisis.
Given that so many people rely on COBRA for health care benefits after a job loss, what is the future of this program?
Congress has actually been very active in making sure that the COBRA subsidy doesn’t expire – they’ve folded its extension into the jobs bills and are stretching it until 2014 in the health care reform bills. So it looks like people will be able to keep their COBRA for longer. But as the data show, many people are not applying for COBRA.
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