Due to a change in jobs, we will lose health insurance for a month unless we opt for COBRA continuation coverage. At $1600 for what would barely be bronze level coverage at other providers, it's a huge amount to pay (we only paid a quarter of that when employed). If we have enough medication to cover the missing month, are there any other options apart from the cheapest Covered California marketplace plan? IE just cover critical illness / emergency cover with a high deductible?

I'm not sure if it matters whether it qualifies as coverage under the ACA. I'm not sure even Trump knows.

There is also a small matter of the Covered California website stating that enrollment now would start in March rather than the February which is when we need it, so that might not be an option after all if it applies in our case.

For a month and you have enough medication, I'd wing it. Wrap everyone in bubblewrap and hope for the best.

I believe that you can enroll in COBRA retroactively within 60 days if you need to claim.

So you could just plan to go without for the month but if something happens you can sign up, pay the premium and coverage will continue without a gap.

The nice thing about COBRA is you have 60 days in which to decide whether to elect it. So if you know that you will be getting new insurance in a month, you can merely elect it retrospectively if it turns out that you needed it during that month. This is what I've always done with insurance breaks, and I've never actually needed to invoke COBRA:

How long do I have to enroll in COBRA benefits?

I did the retroactive COBRA election too.

That's interesting... to be clear, you're all saying I could enact COBRA while the nurse is extracting toys from my kids' noses* in the ER? In other words, apply for insurance for an event in the past?

* They haven't done this. Yet.

Yes, that's correct.

I'm stunned! Cheers everybody.

+1 on the retro active election of COBRA. I've changed jobs twice where I needed COBRA to cover the transition between coverage and I always delayed the activation and never actually paid anything.

Another +1 to the non-activation of COBRA


Yes, you need to enroll by the 15th to start coverage the 1st of the next month. I got stung by this one too!

If you do retroact COBRA you will need to pay starting from day 1. So if you started it up on say day 57, you would have to pay starting back at day 1. You can't just start payments from day 57 going forward. That was how it worked for me about 15 years ago, the last time I was in between jobs.

Still works the same, but the OP only needs it for a month.