Posted on 08/12/2013 2:43:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Twenty-six cents almost cost Sergio Branco his life.
Twenty-six cents.
Most of us could scrape that up from under our couch cushions or on the floor of a car.
Sergio Branco has 26 cents, too. The question was whether or not he would be permitted to pay it.
Branco, a 33-year-old father of three, was a truck driver for Russell Reid, a Keasbey-based waste-management company.
"In his spare time, he would play with his children, liked having barbecues and people over for gatherings," his cousin Sandy Marujo said. "He is a big kid at heart."
In January, Branco wasn’t himself. He didn’t feel right.
"He complained about bone pains and being extremely fatigued," Marujo said. "He decided to go to the emergency room."
The Edison man underwent several tests, which indicated he had a very weak immune system. It could be leukemia, the doctors said.
A few days later, a bone marrow test confirmed the diagnosis: acute myeloid leukemia. The disease, left untreated, travels fast and can kill within months, or even weeks, of diagnosis.
Branco started a series of treatments including chemotherapy and transfusions, and he took three months off from work under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
Doctors soon said he’d need a bone marrow transplant to prolong his life. They found a 10-point match — the best possible match. The transplant and related care for the disease would cost more than $500,000.
Good thing the family had health insurance through Branco’s job, they thought.
But when his three-month leave under FMLA ended, Russell Reid fired him, Branco’s family said.
At least they’d be able to continue health insurance coverage through COBRA, short for the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act. Under COBRA, a terminated employee can continue the same health insurance coverage he had while employed, but
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Paychex cashing that check made them liable for the COBRA. What a mess....
Wait until Obamacare. Ain’t seen nothin yet!
I had a dim memory of something like this happening a little while back. There are two cases, one in 2011 and one in 2009. I think one of those cases turned out to have been either overstated or incorrectly reported.
Made who liable? Paychex?
Paychex made the company liable.
The insurance is offered through the company, not Paychex.
(I never liked Paychex for Payroll, and certainly wouldn’t use them as a third party administrator for COBRA)
Something to look forward to with 0bamacare. (SARCASM)
I don’t like them either. I used them at a very small company years ago, I think there were only about 8 people on the payroll and a lot of those were part timers. EVERY WEEK they made a mistake, a mistake bad enough so that someone or another had to be given a hand written check. It boggled my mind.
I don’t like preparing payroll either ;) It’s hard to do it perfectly, but when you pay someone else to do it...it needs to be perfect.
One of the reasons I no longer am in HR is COBRA, and I can’t even imagine trying to deal with obamacare as an HR person.
(That and I now have a child, I don’t really want to deal with all the squabbling I used to)
From what I could determine, the company did nothing wrong, it was negligence on the contracting company that handled the COBRA payments. Just some stupid robot following the book without once saying to someone "hey, we got a problem here, how should I handle this?"
The original employer did good, as they usually do in these cases..........
“Just some stupid robot following the book without once saying to someone ‘hey, we got a problem here, how should I handle this?’ “
That’s the charitable explanation. If that’s the case, they should have refused to cash the check. Instead they, (of course), cash the check and then drop coverage. This is theft. The payment is for services rendered. The honest solution is to return the check with an explanation.
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I'm not a lawyer, Jim, I'm only a homemaker, but if I were this man I might consider contacting one regarding the possibility of suing the company who fired an employee after learning that he had a life threatening illness.
“I can’t even imagine trying to deal with obamacare as an HR person.”
I’m a seasonal tax preparer for one of the big chains (not the biggest one) and I’m thinking it’s going to be very interesting watching people find out about their fines. Hey, it’ll be interesting learning about my own. Long sad story which I’ll spare us both right now, but I doubt hubby and I will be able to afford the Obamacare.
I handled the COBRA program for my company for years before things changed and outsourcing began.
the LOGICAL solution, which I have done, was to call the COBRA enrollee and tell them their check was short.........end of problem.
It was NEVER beneficial to the company to terminate coverage for a COBRA enrollee due to a mistake on their part because it was more of a problem to reinstate the coverage following the resolution of the problem.......
For all of us conservatives who sometimes think the free market takes care of everything . . . well, sometimes it doesn’t. As in this case. Unfortunately it took the DOL to pressure the insurer to do the right thing. Otherwise, Paychex would never have changed the insurance back.
And the poster who mentioned about firing the employee with this condition: you are right (although I suspect there is more to the story than written here) that it sounds absurd on the surface.
And the first person who claims that the married couple is at fault for underpaying the .26, I hope a family member of yours gets taken advantage of one day.
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