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Page Number: 130

524us1$75M 02-18-99 19:35:22 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 524 U. S. 74 (1998)

85

Opinion of the Court

the event and the election. One wonders why Congress
would have wanted to create such a strange scheme. Thus,
assuming that our reading of § 1162(2)(D)(i) produces an
anomaly, so does Moore’s.

But this is not all, for the anomalous consequences of
Moore’s position are not exhausted without a look at the in-
terpretative morass to which it has led in practice. To sup-
port its thesis that Congress meant individuals situated like
James Geissal to be ineligible for COBRA beneﬁts, Moore
points to a statement in the House Reports on the original
COBRA bill, that “[t]he Committee [on Ways and Means] is
concerned with reports of the growing number of Americans
without any health insurance coverage and the decreasing
willingness of our Nation’s hospitals to provide care to those
who cannot afford to pay.” H. R. Rep. No. 99–241, pt. 1,
p. 44 (1985); see 114 F. 3d, at 1463 (quoting House Report).
Of course, if this concern (expressed in one House Committee
Report) were thought to be a legitimate limit on the meaning
of the statute as enacted, there would be no COBRA cover-
age for any beneﬁciary who had “any health insurance” on
the date of election, or obtained “any” thereafter. But nei-
ther Moore nor any court rejecting the plain reading has
gone quite so far.
Instead, that draconian alternative has
been averted by a nontextual compromise.

The compromise apparently alludes to the proviso that
§ 1162(2)(D)(i) applies so as to authorize termination of
COBRA coverage only if the coverage provided by the other
group health plan “does not contain any exclusion or limita-
tion with respect to any preexisting condition of such bene-
ﬁciary.” Moore urges us to hold, as some Courts of Appeals
have done, that although Congress generally intended to
deny COBRA coverage to individuals with other group in-
surance on the election date, there will still be COBRA eligi-
bility in such cases if there is a “signiﬁcant gap” between the
coverage offered by the employer’s plan and that offered by