There is a grace period before you have to start paying, and the dates should be on the letter you receive when you leave your employer. The grace period does not last forever, and when it's almost up, you need to pay several months at once to get coverage. (another comment suggests these rules might vary somewhat by state, and I'm sure that is also possible)

For ACA, policies, the grace period is forever. Job loss is a "life event" that lets you jump in any time, not just an arbitrary open enrollment window.

The grace period to start paying for a plan under the ACA is 60 days, not "forever." It's true that you don't need to wait for open enrollment, a special enrollment period opens for you when you lose your job.

edit: I'm not sure there's any grace period at all with the ACA. You have 60 days to sign up, but unlike COBRA, I don't see any evidence you can start using the insurance without paying for it first, which is the nice thing about the COBRA grace period.

https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage-outside-open-enrollment/...

I was talking about California. CA has no such limitation right now.

https://www.coveredca.com/individuals-and-families/getting-c...

  I don't see any evidence you can start using the insurance without paying for it first,

Because there's no limitation on pre existing conditions, it's effectively the same. You can sign up the day you get sick and have a free ride until then. That's why the CBO scoring was all bullshit.

> Because there's no limitation on pre existing conditions, it's effectively the same. You can sign up the day you get sick and have a free ride until then.

How does that work if you've suffered a catastrophic injury and you're not well enough to sign up until after you've been treated in the hospital for several days?

It's similar, but it doesn't sound like the COBRA thing, where you have the option to retroactively extend your employer's coverage, or not, for a couple of months and you can still visit the hospital the same as you always did (or not) because of the payment and notification grace period. If it turns out you didn't need the insurance, you don't need to pay for it.

At least in CA, if you opt out of COBRA, you can't opt back in later.

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.