Subject: Re: maguari wins! Or rather...

From: Jean-Joseph Cote <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 07:39:48 -0500

>> Jean-Joseph:
>> maguari (n) Payments made by a former employee to a company in order
>> to continue insurance coverage or other perquisites after termination.
>> Aussie:   COBRA!
>> MyS:      The perqs practice is illegal, I believe, but...
>> James:    I wish this had a generic term, but suspect that there isn't
one.
>> I just knew it as COBRA (which I may be misremembering as an acronym,
>> hence the all-caps). It was also known as "how to go broke fast."
Fortunately,
>> I eventually became re-employed, after a fashion.
>> Linda:    Isn't that Cobra?
>
> Pierre comments:
> COBRA, or CORBA? CORBA (Common Object Reserve Broker Architecture, or 
> something like that) is a sort of interprocess communication in
computers.

No, they're remembering COBRA, which is a way to extend medical insurance
(though not other things).  I believe it stands for something like
Comprehensive Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which is the piece of
legislation that created this possibility (among other things).  Might
seem like that name doesn't have much to do with the medical insurance
extension, but it's at least as relevant a name the kind os stuff we get
these days, e.g. "USA Patriot Act", which as far as I can tell has
nothing whatsoever to do with patriotism.

This definition, by the way, was originally created for whatever the
first word was that Kir put up, and I decided that I was going to stick
with it no matter what word ultimately got used.

Jean-Joseph