Then the COBRA paperwork shows up, and the sticker price lands like a second layoff.
Federal COBRA lets you keep your employer's health plan for up to 18 months after leaving a job.
The catch: you now pay the full premium yourself, both the part your employer used to cover and your own share.
Add a 2% administrative fee, and the number gets ugly fast.
KFF's annual employer survey puts average premiums at roughly $8,950 a year for single coverage and about $25,600 for family plans in 2024.
A single person who used to see maybe $150 taken from each paycheck could suddenly owe $750 or more a month.
For many households, COBRA is technically available and practically impossible.
The good news is that COBRA is rarely your only door.
If you lost job-based coverage, you usually qualify for a special enrollment period on Healthcare.gov or your state exchange, and you have 60 days from the coverage loss to sign up.
Subsidies under the Affordable Care Act are often far more generous than people assume, especially after the enhanced subsidies of recent years.
A family of four earning $70,000 might pay full freight on COBRA while qualifying for a marketplace plan at a fraction of the cost, sometimes with lower deductibles.
An independent broker or a navigator at Healthcare.gov can run both numbers in under an hour, free of charge.
Other options worth pricing: a spouse's employer plan, if open enrollment or a qualifying event allows it; a short-term plan, which is cheaper but often skips maternity, mental health, and prescription coverage; and Medicaid, which covers millions of low-income adults and has no premium in most states.
COBRA gives you 60 days from the notice to elect coverage, and you can sometimes elect retroactively after a medical bill arrives.
Marketplace enrollment also closes 60 days after your job loss.
Miss both windows and you may be uninsured until the next open enrollment.
One more trap: people assume COBRA is always the only way to keep their doctors.
Marketplace plans vary by network, so check whether your physicians and hospitals are included before you commit.
A cheaper plan you cannot use is not cheaper.
If you are staring at a COBRA bill that does not fit your budget, call your state's insurance department or a local navigator this week.
The deadline, not the premium, is the thing that actually traps people.
The uncomfortable truth is that COBRA was designed for a world where job loss was brief and premiums were modest.
Final Thoughts
Until Washington fixes that gap, the smartest move is treating COBRA as one quote among several, not a bill you have to accept.