84
Opinion of the Court
That the plain reading does not confine COBRA strictly to guardianship of the status quo is, of course, perfectly true, though it is much less certain whether this fact should count against the plain reading (even assuming that the obvious reading would be vulnerable to such an objection, see Ardestani v. INS, 502 U. S. 129, 135 (1991)). The statute is neither cast expressly in terms of the status quo, nor does it speak to the status quo on the date of the qualifying event except with reference to the coverage subject to election. Nor does a beneficiary's decision to take advantage of another group policy not previously in effect carry any indicia of the sort of windfall Congress presumably would have disapproved. Since the beneficiary has to pay for whatever COBRA coverage he obtains, there is no reason to assume that he will make an election for coverage he does not need, whether he is covered by another policy in place before the qualifying event or one obtained after it but before his election.
Still, it is true that if during the interim between the qualifying event and election a beneficiary gets a new job, say, with health coverage (having no exclusion or limitation for his condition), he will have the benefit of COBRA, whereas he will not have it if his new job and coverage come after the election date. Do we classify this as an anomaly or merely a necessary consequence of the need to draw a line somewhere? For the sake of argument we might call it an anomaly, but that would only balance it against the anomaly of Moore's own position, which defies not only normal language usage but the expectations of common sense: since an election to continue coverage is retroactive to the date of the qualifying event, under Moore's reading of § 1162(2)(D)(i) an election that is ineffective to bring about continuation coverage for the roughly 18 (or 36) month statutory period would nonetheless have the surprising effect of providing continuation coverage for the period of weeks, or even days, between
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