What is COBRA?
It's a Federally backed program.
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) gives workers and their families who lose their health benefits the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan for limited periods of time under certain circumstances such as voluntary or involuntary job loss, reduction in the hours worked, transition between jobs, death, divorce, and other life events. Qualified individuals may be required to pay the entire premium for coverage up to 102% of the cost to the plan.
COBRA which generally requires that group health plans sponsored by employers with 20 or more employees in the prior year offer employees and their families the opportunity for a temporary extension of health coverage (called continuation coverage) in certain instances where coverage under the plan would otherwise end.
What is mini-COBRA?
It's a state backed program.
"Since the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in February 2009...“mini-COBRA” laws—provisions enacted since the passage of the federal COBRA in order to offer the health insurance continuation provided by the federal law to companies with fewer than 20 employees. Similar to the COBRA provisions in ARRA, most of these changes give some employees who have been involuntarily terminated a second opportunity to choose COBRA continuation. The stimulus bill itself provides that the COBRA subsidy is available for state continuation coverage." - State Mini-Cobra Laws for Small Businesses