Any Cal-COBRA experience?

[Alex The Great]

This is about former employees of companies located in California. I believe everyone is familiar with federal COBRA and many actually used it after the job termination. Typically it provide up to 18 months coverage. But in California, there is Cal-COBRA which is essentially replacing federal COBRA for companies with 2 to 19 employees. But it also can provide an extension of coverage for employees separated from business with more than 19 people if all 18 months of federal COBRA coverage has been used. Then it looks like Both COBRA and Cal-COBRA can cover 36 months in total. Did anyone have experience with Cal-COBRA? Does it work as advertised? I found many references on the web but not much feedback from real people who used it. For example, there is a descent write-up here:
https://employmentlaw.help/california/cobra/

 

[tb001]

We went on cal-cobra after being on cobra for the maximum period. Note that any dental or optical coverage you may have been receiving through a cobra plan will be dropped. Somehow I missed that and it makes the cal-cobra price not nearly as good. Other that it was pretty much like being on cobra.

We switched at the end of last year to a silver aca ppo plan and have been quite happy. We had a ppo as part of cobra with the same insurer (blue shield) and the coverage is very similar. One dr my DH was seeing out of state is no longer covered, but we expected that and had been told that BS was grandfathering the plan that covered that anyway. We’re saving ~$300/mo for a family of 4 by being on the aca plan.

DH had an ER visit last month and we assumed we would see a big bill like we had before with our old coverage, since we hadn’t met our deductible yet. I think all of the bills have come in and so far it looks like we’ll have to pay about 400 out of pocket.

 

[Alex The Great]

tb001, thank you so much for the info.
Yes I realize Cal-Cobra can be more expensive not just because of less coverage but also because of higher administrative fees.
But I wanted to explore this route mainly because of Roth conversions which makes ACA plans premiums extremely high.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

We had a COBRA plan in California prior to the ACA, then went on a COBRA continuation policy afterwards. The COBRA part was horrible. The vendor administering the plan was some low cost bidder and our policy, even though we paid on time, was cancelled frequently because of their errors on their part. We'd have to call and call to get it reinstated. They finally set some program flag to "on" so it would stop being cancelled every month, and then we had trouble getting the letter of prior continuous coverage when we went from COBRA to the continuation policy because of the flag they set previously to keep our policy from being cancelled. The rate increased from something like $900 a month to $2300 one month for less coverage with a huge deductible while on the COBRA policy. We also had a lot of trouble getting any information on what continuation policies we could qualify for, how to apply and through what companies.

All in all it was the worst insurance experience of my life. The former company it was through was useless in providing any help. I got the feeling there were deliberately trying to get us off their plan and didn't want former employees on a COBRA policy since they were self insured. This was 10 years ago, pre-ACA, so maybe it would be better now or if the policy was through a less evil megacorp.

We've have had zero issues with the ACA Blue Shield policy we've had ever since.

 

[Alex The Great]

Oh, I see where troubles are coming. Thanks for sharing your story. May be ACA would be still a better alternative compared to Cobra extension.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Oh, I see where troubles are coming. Thanks for sharing your story. May be ACA would be still a better alternative compared to Cobra extension.

I feel like part of the problem for us was that the former employer had to offer coverage because of COBRA laws, but they had no incentive to do it well or keep us happy. In fact I felt like the incompetence was a deliberate attempt to get us to go buy insurance somewhere else, since only households with pre-existing conditions back then would stay on expensive COBRA policies, since alternative were few and far between.

But with the ACA policies, companies like Blue Shield actively sell those policies and want to attract and keep customers, so they have real customers service departments who are actually helpful, at least most of the time.