Renewal Considerations - Potential Liability Exposures Due to COVID-19-Related Extensions

Issued date: 10/20/20

Employees have an extended timeframe to, in part, elect COBRA, make COBRA payments, add dependents, and appeal denials of benefits. As the timeframe may extend beyond the current plan year, in some cases with coverage going into effect retroactively for many months, there are concerns about what gaps in insurance coverage there could be. This may particularly be an issue with stop loss insurance.

Employers must disregard the Outbreak Period, March 1, 2020 until 60 days after the announced end of the National Emergency, for each of the following topics below. At this point, an end to the National Emergency has not been announced, and it should be noted that the announced end date of the National Emergency may not be the same date as the end of the Public Health Emergency period announced by HHS (currently October 23, 2020). For purposes of the below examples, February 28, 2021 is used as the end of the Outbreak Period, but it may end earlier than this date, in which case the following examples are subject to the change.