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  Expiring insurance subsidy imperils laid-off Americans
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ContributorArmyDem 
Last EditedArmyDem  Nov 28, 2009 05:18pm
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News DateFriday, November 27, 2009 11:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionBy Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Just before Don Hall and his family left town for Thanksgiving, the laid-off manufacturing supervisor from Castalia, Ohio, wrote a $763.81 check to his health insurance company for his December payment.

He'd paid $237 in November, but the big increase wasn't due to rising health costs or a catastrophic illness — and it wasn't an isolated incident.

Hall, 56, is among an estimated 7 million unemployed Americans who get a federal subsidy to help them buy health insurance under legislation known as the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act.

For workers who are laid off or downsized between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009, the COBRA subsidy pays 65 percent of their job-based health insurance premiums for nine months.

That subsidy, however, expires Monday for Hall and untold thousands of others who began receiving it in March, when it first became available as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Unless Congress moves swiftly to extend the benefit, millions of other jobless Americans will experience the same sticker shock when they exhaust their subsidies and must pay full health insurance premiums, instead of just 35 percent.

For many, the cost of coverage will triple, forcing cash-strapped unemployed workers to scramble for cheaper private coverage, go uninsured or suck it up like Hall and pay the higher rates.
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