It's a bad pattern for the employee, but a good pattern for employers and the healthcare industrial complex. The possibility that you could be bankrupt if you let your insurance lapse is an enormous concern for employees that may want to leave but can't; much more powerful, and cheaper, than golden handcuffs.
COBRA is a joke, as if most could afford multi-thousand dollar a month bill when unemployed.
What that communicates to me is that those in power, both of the gov and of businesses, are primarily concerned with forcing productivity to make line go up than they are with incentivizing treating people humanely. But really I don't think that's so surprising considering the timeline we find ourselves in.
IME, COBRA is almost always a better deal than the marketplace offerings typically, unless you qualify for marketplace-only subsidies. COBRA premiums for whatever reason are hundreds of dollars (or more) cheaper than marketplace plans.
I've also had the opposite experience. My workplace plan through COBRA was around $500/mo, while only the highest-end marketplace plans were around that range. I took a middle-end plan at ~$300/mo.
To be fair I hadn't looked closely at what all my workplace plan covered, but I was doing physical therapy when I switched that wasn't covered (had to reach high deductible) on my workplace plan and was covered on my marketplace plan!
It depends heavily on location. When I last ended up on Cobra in California it was a touch more expensive than the marketplace plan but my work plan was much better than the best available on the marketplace so it was worth it to go Cobra.
COBRA is a joke, as if most could afford multi-thousand dollar a month bill when unemployed.
What that communicates to me is that those in power, both of the gov and of businesses, are primarily concerned with forcing productivity to make line go up than they are with incentivizing treating people humanely. But really I don't think that's so surprising considering the timeline we find ourselves in.