They will "cover" 12 months of COBRA, which I take to mean they'll pay the premiums:

> In the midst of a global health crisis of unknown duration, we want to limit the burden of healthcare costs. In the US, we will cover 12 months of health insurance through COBRA. In all other countries, we will cover health insurance costs through the end of 2020. This is because we’re either legally unable to continue coverage, or our current plans will not allow for an extension. We will also provide four months of mental health support through KonTerra.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/05/airbnb-to-lay-off-nearly-190...

Anyone who loses health insurance due to losing their employment (even if they voluntarily resign) is legally allowed to buy COBRA for 18 months. I think they are paying for it, otherwise this would be a fairly meaningless statement since the employer isn't involved with COBRA at all and that's less eligibility than any employee would have.

Many times employers will make statements like this for better PR (always leaving out that they were required to)

In this case, they would have stated 18 months.

I mean, if they're paying 4 months salary, and healthcare optional, they'd probably just pay 3.5 months salary and offer healthcare.

Can you name a single time this has happened?

Something like that happened to me. I was a grad student until the project I was working on ran out of funding. Their website said if you left the program you could pay for health insurance out of pocket under the same plan you had while a student.

What they left out was that the company could reject you as a customer if you had a pre-existing condition. (This was before the ACA took effect.) They can legally do this because COBRA does not apply to grad students.

Fortunately, Oregon at the time had a state-subsidized health insurance plan called OMIP for people that were rejected by private health plans. The premiums weren't cheap, but they weren't worse than equivalent plans. Eventually OMIP was superceded by the ACA marketplace.

I worked for a company that was sold for scraps and they laid off all but there people. It didn’t affect me, I got a contract the next week with one of our clients that I worked with and paid for Cobra.

However, my Cobra eligibility died when the acquiring company cancelled their health care and moved everything to India.

Almost literally every company that had to make changes in compliance with COVID-19 health and safety guidelines.

So that’s a no on the example?

Agreed, it definitely sounds like they are paying for it