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Comment by ModernMech | Hacker News Reader

My favorite example of the safety net not working is when my wife applied for unemployment, she was told she didn't make enough while she was employed to qualify for assistance. That's right, she was too poor to qualify for help.

Their solution? Go get a job and make more money, then she could qualify for unemployment. Gee thanks, I wish I had thought of that plan.

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another lovely one is COBRA health insurance coverage after losing your job; you gain the privilege of both being out of work AND paying for health insurance out of your own pocket

This is not a fault with COBRA. Would you rather be out of work and have to negotiate new insurance as an individual? You're just paying the insurance premiums that used to be covered by your employer.

Hasn't COBRA more-or-less been obviated by the ACA rules on pre-existing conditions anyway? The only people I know who used COBRA in the past did so because there was a family member who was essentially uninsurable on an individual basis.

It may not be the same in every state but when I compared my COBRA offering (pretty good healthcare) to a matching plan on the ACA the COBRA program was almost $500 cheaper per month. I was on exchange insurance between jobs as a consultant and I paid $750/mo for bronze tier "only if you're dying" insurance.

No? The healthcare.gov options with similar benefits to an employer plan are more expensive than what the employer was paying, so it often makes sense to keep the COBRA option.

Source: Did.

The ACA plans I had available were only slightly less expensive than my COBRA, but there was not a single ACA plan available that would cover any out of network expense like my COBRA plan did. I did switch to an ACA plan after COBRA expired and it was fine, but I slightly preferred my COBRA plan.

it’s a shit solution to a monumental problem

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