> Even if the federal government picks up the bill, it's still a discontinuity in business, something an employer would want to avoid.

IMO this as well is something where the DevOps slogan "if it hurts, do it more often" should be applied.

The "discontinuity" of an employee leaving temporarily with months of warning in advance is the easy case. If that is a serious problem for your business, it's a failure of company culture and management. How would you deal with the "Hit by a bus" scenario?