COBRA
What is the employee threshold for COBRA?
For COBRA, employee threshold is 20; requirement is The plan sponsor of each group health plan shall provide, in accordance with this part, that each qualified beneficiary who would lose coverage under the plan as a result of a qualifying event is entitled, under the plan, to elect, within the election period, continuation coverage under the plan; counting note is normally employed fewer than 20 employees on a typical business day during the preceding calendar year, verified against its source on 2026-11-01.
Subsection (a) shall not apply to any group health plan for any calendar year if all employers maintaining such plan normally employed fewer than 20 employees on a typical business day during the preceding calendar year.
— uscode.house.gov, retrieved 2026-09-29
- Law
- COBRA our reading
- Employee threshold
- 20 verified
- Requirement
- The plan sponsor of each group health plan shall provide, in accordance with this part, that each qualified beneficiary who would lose coverage under the plan as a result of a qualifying event is entitled, under the plan, to elect, within the election period, continuation coverage under the plan. verified
- Counting note
- normally employed fewer than 20 employees on a typical business day during the preceding calendar year verified
Values marked our reading are our classification of what the source says — the source does not print them in those words. The quote below is the evidence for each one; judge it yourself.
Where each value comes from
The value above is stated away from the sentence quoted with the answer, so the passage that states it is shown here too.
Requirement
The plan sponsor of each group health plan shall provide, in accordance with this part, that each qualified beneficiary who would lose coverage under the plan as a result of a qualifying event is entitled, under the plan, to elect, within the election period, continuation coverage under the plan.
— all from uscode.house.gov, retrieved 2026-09-29
Source
- uscode.house.govhttps://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title29-section1161&num=0&edition=prelim