Benefits Issue [N/A]
I'm an HR Manager at a small company. I'd like some input on a COBRA issue that is currently happening. We had an employee that was a somewhat contentious termination early last year. The employee went on COBRA under our insurance plan as opposed to going into the marketplace. Everything was fine until we decided to switch to a PEO with medical through our payroll provider. As part of the onboarding of the PEO, I sent all the information about employees that are utilizing COBRA through our insurance. They sent COBRA packets to these employees in December. I signed a letter with our previous broker to send through to all our providers (COBRA, HRIS, Payroll, Medical Insurance, Supplemental Insurance, etc.) to close down all of our services. Apparently, the letter didn't go out to two of those people (COBRA and Supplemental Insurance). We were still paying for our COBRA provider until about a month ago.
Here's the sticky part. Our new PEO sent out packets (by email and mail) that our former employee says they didn't get. They were relying on the previous COBRA administrators and still paying premiums through them. I was under the impression that everything was fine since no one was reaching out to me about any of this and I was not paying close attention as onboarding was quite a strenuous process.
In early April, our former COBRA administrator sent through a renewal bill and it was flagged by our financial audit team as a "renewal fee". They kicked it over to me to ask if we needed to renew considering we have that service through our new PEO. I reached out to our PEO team and asked if we needed to continue that service for any reason. They said that we did not need to. I asked if we had anyone on COBRA currently and they said "no". I didn't really think anything of it because former employees drop off COBRA all the time and I wasn't really worried about it. They get new jobs or decide to go through the marketplace or whatever.
I wrote to our previous (but kind of concurrent) COBRA administrators apologizing for the miscommunication and let them know that we were not renewing with them and would like to end service with them with a retroactive date of 1/1/2026. A week or so later, I get an email forwarded from our CEO, where a person from the former COBRA administrator had been trying to get ahold of us to get the new insurance information. She had been emailing the former General Manager who had set up the system in the first place, but not me. I thought I was the general contact, but I had no messages from her. She was furious and said she'd been trying to get a hold of someone from our company for MONTHS to put this former employee on the new healthcare plan. (she did write in to our info line, attempt to call, or anything like that. I apologized for the miscommunication, let her know the person she was reaching out to was gone and told her I hadn't realized the person was still on COBRA.
I followed up with ours PEO to see if they could add the employee and they said they couldn't and that it had been too long. I reached out to the former company and asked if we could just provide them the information for the new plans and continue to contract through them. They said they already canceled our account and refunded the employee money so they couldn't continue on with our service.
I'm feeling a little distraught. I want to help this employee, but I don't see anyway to do that? Does anyone have any advice? I'm also a little nervous since this employee was very dissatisfied with the company upon termination and has been known to be litigious.