President Biden announced an extension to the National Emergency concerning the COVID-19 Pandemic. According to the White House, “The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause significant risk to the public health and safety of the Nation. For this reason, the national emergency declared on March 13, 2020, and beginning March 1, 2020, must continue in effect beyond March 1, 2022.”
With this announcement, the National Emergency continues and so does the extension of timelines under the COBRA rules.
The COBRA rules set timeframes for certain election, notice and payment requirements. In 2020, many of the basic COBRA election and payment timeframes were extended to take into account hardships from the COVID-19 national emergency. Plans subject to ERISA or the Internal Revenue Code became required to disregard timeframe due dates falling during the “COVID-19 Outbreak Period” which was defined as the period starting March 1, 2020 and ending 60 days after the end of the National Emergency. In 2021, the Outbreak Period was limited to a maximum disregarded period of one year (the “disregarded period”).
Plans have to disregard the Outbreak Period when calculating the following COBRA due dates:
- The 60 day COBRA election period
- The 45 day first COBRA payment due date
- The ongoing COBRA payment premium due date (including the 30 day grace period)
- The date for individuals to notify the plan of a qualifying event or determination of disability
- The date for providing a COBRA notice
Since the National Emergency is in place past the scheduled 3/1/2022 expiration date, plans must continue to administer COBRA in accordance with the disregarded timeframes.
