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Cobra has this unique advantage that you can turn it on retroactively, so it's actually decently cheap for healthy individuals. You can just plan to not pay for it and then if things go wrong you can incur medical bills and send them to cobra after signing up. Of course you do have to backpay cobra if this happens.

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Yep, that's true! Thanks for adding that, it is important. As long as you can put enough money aside to cover the entire COBRA period, this is indeed the best "play" when offered COBRA, unless you're sure you're gonna need it from the beginning (in which case you may as well just sign up to begin with—less hassle that way). If you don't end up needing it, you basically just got free health insurance for a few months.

it's 60 days to elect whether you'll be using COBRA. If employment is terminated early in the month usually coverage is still there through the end of the month, but if termination is at the very end of the month it can be exactly just 2 months, not few.

Ah good catch. The 60 day deadline was paused during Covid but I guess it’s coming back starting this May.

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