> health insurance always keeps me from never going a day without being employed.

There's no way to cap the actual health care costs, but the health insurance is about 30k/year for a family of 4 on COBRA.

That is a lot or not depending on how your job is affecting your health.

I'm right now spending a year off work and leaving my job has definitely improved my life more than paying me 30k would (of course, there are other expenses too - it's like a 120k/year burn rate in the bay area).

My father ended his life from issues related to work stress (it had to do with violent naxal robberies and being personally threatened, but still no sleep for 3-4 days messes you up), so I might have a very skewed point of view on this, but the lesson was to never take the "retire and do hobbies at 60" for granted & to draw-down the financials into time spent when you can keep up with your kids on shared things.

You should know that COBRA can be retroactive.

You do not have to sign up when you terminate your employment. You can sign up when you actually need medical care that you want to be covered. Though, at that time you have to pay back for the time since termination.

It makes it a little easier to walk away and "hope for the best" on the healthcare front.

At least in the US, you can use COBRA to keep your insurance for a little bit. It's very expensive though, so it's still not a great option.

COBRA is a disaster. its often more expensive than when shopping around for insurance by yourself.

Kinda sorta maybe. Yes you can get “cheaper” plans through private insurance but the trade off between lower premiums vs higher deductibles makes the equation a bit more complex.

That being said… yes cobra is usually insanely expensive. But that might be market rate for whatever “all you can eat low deductible” health plan your employer was offering.

You can often do better on the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges.

its expensive, but that's how much your employer is paying for your health insurance.

The hidden costs keep growing and force people to keep jobs...just to have health.

But rest assured, this is a government problem that can be fixed.

If you take the employer payroll tax subsidy away, plus take mandatory healthcare insurance requisites and poof, this problems go away.

There would be tremendous disruption for sure, but we need to get away from "insurance for everything" when in reality it should be you have "insurance for disaster situations"

Or we could realize that we already have socialized healthcare, just in the stupidest most expensive way, at the ER (who can not refuse anyone service) and change it to a more effective way. No one is arguing that ERs should turn dieing people away, so we not only have it, but it's pretty much universally supported. Now we just need to agree to have it in a better form.