New COVID Relief Act Provides COBRA Premium Subsidies and Increased Exclusion for Employer-Provided Dependent Care Assistance Programs Monday, March 15, 2021 On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (the “Act”). As part of the almost $2 trillion in relief, the Act contains provisions creating a temporary subsidy for premium payments for extended health care coverage under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (“COBRA”), as well as increasing the income exclusion for employer-provided dependent care assistance programs in 2021. As group health plans will likely see an increase in COBRA continuation coverage elections as a result of the COBRA premium subsidy, group health plan sponsors and plan administrators should ensure they are complying with the complex administrative requirements under recent guidance from the Department of Labor, Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (collectively the “Agencies”) requiring group health plans to disregard certain timeframes and deadlines related to: (a) HIPAA special enrollment, (b) COBRA elections and premium payments, (c) claims procedures and (d) external claims review. Specifically, plan sponsors and plan administrators should be aware that EBSA Disaster Relief Notice 2021-01 (“Notice 2021-01”) recently clarified the Agencies’ position regarding the expiration of these extended deadlines which most in the industry believed were set to expire by operation of law effective February 28, 2021. In Notice 2021-01, the Agencies instead take the incredibly administratively burdensome position that the extensions of the employee benefit plan related deadlines described above apply on an event-by-event basis. In other words, the Agencies are taking the position that plan administrators are required to extend each individual deadline described in the original guidance on an individualized basis. However, if the “Outbreak Period” (as defined in Notice 2021-01) ends before such one-year extension periods expire, the original timeframes for individuals and plans with periods that were previously disregarded will begin to run 60 days after the announced end of the COVID-19 National Emergency. See our prior update for more complete information regarding these extended deadlines.