Hum. In IL and IN you have either 45 or 60 days to accept or decline coverage (don’t quote me on exact number, do the research). It made the optimal short term insurance policy to be:
Don’t fill out cobra paperwork to day 59
If not sick or total bills less than 2 months cobra payments, decline cobra.
If sick and total bills > 2 months cobra payments, decide to accept coverage.
Used this for like 5 job hops. Never had to opt in, but it seemed fine. Confirmed with HR several times that it would work as I said.
After 2 months it starts to get gross. Likely want to get an emergency only plan.
I think your heuristics change if you happen to have an ongoing condition or family needing coverage (who may also happen to have costly out-of-coverage costs).
This is the kind of mental gymnastics that would be completely avoided if we had even the most basic of universal coverage.
It's the same in CA in my experience. I guess people don't think about it b/c we're used to pre-paying for insurance and with COBRA there's a decent period of time to make a decision and you also pay for insurance the following month instead of paying for it prior to/during the month.
