================================================== BenefitsLink Newsletter New U.S. tax and labor law materials on the net pertaining to employee benefits, for employers, participants and service-providers. ================================================== FINALLY, FINAL REGS The long-proposed COBRA regulations have gone final. IRS issued them today. Hypertext version is online at http://www.benefitslink.com/taxregs/54.4980B-final.shtml An overview, from the preamble to the new final regs: The regulations are intended to provide clear, administrable rules regarding COBRA continuation coverage. The regulations give comprehensive guidance on many questions under COBRA, with a view to enhancing the certainty and reliance available to all parties -- including employees, qualified beneficiaries, employers, employee organizations, and group health plans -- in determining their COBRA rights and obligations. The guidance is designed to further the protective purposes of COBRA without undue administrative burdens or costs on employers, employee organizations, or group health plans. For example, the regulations: * Prevent group health plans from terminating COBRA continuation coverage on the basis of other coverage that a qualified beneficiary had prior to electing COBRA continuation coverage, in accordance with the Supreme Court's decision in Geissal v. Moore Medical Corp. * Give employers and employee organizations significant flexibility in determining, for purposes of COBRA, the number of group health plans they maintain. This will reduce burdens on employers and employee organizations by permitting them to structure their group health plans in an efficient and cost- effective manner and to satisfy their COBRA obligations based upon that structure. * Provide baseline rules for determining the COBRA liabilities of buyers and sellers of corporate stock and corporate assets and permit buyers and sellers to reallocate and carry out those liabilities by agreement. This will significantly enhance employers' ability to negotiate and to plan appropriately for the treatment of qualified beneficiaries in connection with mergers and acquisitions, while protecting the rights of qualified beneficiaries affected by the transactions. * Limit the application of COBRA for most health flexible spending arrangements. This will ensure that COBRA continuation coverage under health flexible spending arrangements is available in appropriate cases without requiring continuation coverage where that would not serve the statutory purposes. * Eliminate the requirement that group health plans offer qualified beneficiaries the option to elect only core (health) coverage under a group health plan that otherwise provides both core and noncore (vision and dental) coverage. * Give employers, in determining whether the small-employer plan exception applies, the option of counting by pay period rather than by every business day, and provide, for that exception, for the consistent treatment of part-time employees through the use of full-time equivalents. ================================================== To unsubscribe: send email to majordomo@majordomo.net with "unsubscribe BL-newsletter" in the body of the message. Anyone can subscribe by sending email to majordomo@majordomo.net with "subscribe BL-newsletter" in the body of the message. Help wanted? Job wanted? See http://EmployeeBenefitsJobs.com/