Before You Begin: The tools in the COBRA tab are only applicable to organizations offering health benefits in the United States.
The tools in Benefits Administration > COBRA allow you to manage coverage in accordance with the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). When coverage in a plan that is flagged as “subject to COBRA” ends without being replaced by another COBRA plan option, Dayforce automatically triggers a COBRA event. In the COBRA tab, you can manage these events for employees and their covered dependents.
In the COBRA tab, you can perform the following tasks:
- Identify employees and dependents who have lost coverage in elections that are subject to COBRA.
- Use the mass assign function to update multiple COBRA events at once.
- Select and approve multiple COBRA events in the Auto-Assign status at once.
- Prepare the COBRA event data for export to a third party.
You can also check status and progress information for Benefits Administration background jobs and open the Reports configuration dialog box from this tab. See Benefits Administration Reporting.
The COBRA tab doesn't show any COBRA event data when you first go to it, but the Filter panel is open by default. Click Apply Filter to use the default filter settings, or set them as you require first.
Note: The default filter parameters for the COBRA tab include two date parameters: (COBRA) Coverage End Date and (Election) Coverage To Date. Typically these dates are the same, but not always; for example, if a change is made to the election after the COBRA event is generated.
In the COBRA tab, Dayforce filters by COBRA event records first, and then by all other parameters.
For descriptions of filter parameters and steps on how to set filters and favorites in the Benefits Administration feature, see Benefits Administration Filters.
After you have filtered for the events that you want to work with, Dayforce displays the returned results ordered by the employee name. Before you expand an employee's details, Dayforce displays information in the following columns:
- Name
- Employee #
- Employment Status
- Employment Status Date
- Employment Status Reason
When you click the employee's name, Dayforce takes you to the Benefits > COBRA screen in People. When you expand an employee’s information by clicking the arrow next to the employee's name, Dayforce shows the COBRA event data. The columns are listed in the order in which they are displayed in Dayforce as follows:
| Column Name | Information Displayed |
|---|---|
| Name | The name of the employee or dependent. |
| Election | The plan and option name. |
| Event Date | The qualifying event date; the date assigned by the administrator during the approval process as the official date when coverage was ended. This is the date used by the COBRA vendor. |
| Reason | The reason that the COBRA event was triggered. |
| Subsidy Date | The date when an employee’s Subsidized COBRA ends. |
| Status | The status of the COBRA event. |
| Ready for Export | Displays a checkmark if the event record is ready for export. |
| Coverage Start Date | The COBRA coverage start date. |
| Coverage End Date | The COBRA coverage end date. The coverage end date, when the COBRA event is triggered, is usually the same as the end date of the election, but not always (for example, if a change is made to the election after the COBRA event is generated). |
| Modified | The user name of the person who last modified the record. |
| Sent Date | The date that the COBRA event record was sent to the vendor. |
| Assigned Date | The date when the event was approved (that is, when the event date and reason are assigned). |
When you select an employee in this tab and click Profile in the toolstrip, Dayforce opens the People feature in the Benefits > COBRA screen, where you can view and manage COBRA events for individual employees. See COBRA Events.
The following topics describe how to manage COBRA event records in Benefits Administration: