KEY FINDINGS

Average unemployment checks are not sufficient to pay COBRA premiums.

• Nationally, to maintain single coverage, the average unemployed worker would need to spend 30 percent of his or her unemployment insurance (UI) check on COBRA premiums.
• In many states, the situation is even worse:
  • To maintain coverage for themselves, in six states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia), newly unemployed workers would need to spend, on average, more than 40 percent of their UI income on COBRA premiums.
  • In an additional 11 states (Delaware, Florida, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin) plus the District of Columbia, newly unemployed workers would need to spend, on average, more than one-third of their UI income on COBRA premiums.
• Maintaining family coverage under COBRA is an economic impossibility for most newly unemployed workers. Nationally, unemployed workers would need to spend nearly 84 percent of their UI income, on average, to pay for premiums for family coverage.
  • In nine states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and West Virginia), the average premiums for family coverage under COBRA equal or exceed total UI income.
  • In an additional 32 states (Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) plus the District of Columbia, premiums for family coverage under COBRA would consume, on average, more than three-fourths of the average UI income.
    

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