I believe it's just the full cost of the plan you were already on, the sum of what you and your employer were paying for it.

So it can be expensive if your employer was paying a lot for it.

It can seem expensive if you ignored the compensation your employer was paying while you were employed.

for someone that just lost their job having to pay basically double what you were paying for health insurance it certainly is expensive from their pov. health care in america is not something any other country would ask to have save some esoteric elective surgery out of pocket if you are rich.

I think I've only had one job where the employer funded $ amount of my health plan was actually spelled out. My expected contribution was always made known at enrollment time but the employer contribution was left to blind speculation.

FWIW "Employer Paid Benefits" are shown on TriNet pay statements. TriNet is a fairly common PEO among startups.

They wanted like $1400/month for family coverage when I left my last job. I rolled the dice and went without it. It's available retroactively so if you need it later you can sign up for it.

The crazyness of the best country in the world. "I rolled the dice!". This looks insane to any non-American.

Unfortunately not to some here in Switzerland. The average adult here pays around $350 USD/month for just their coverage, according to official statistics. The total cost for a family might end up less than $1400, but not by much.

Edited to add source: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/new-method_health-insur...

A COBRA plan can be about ~$500-1000 for an individual in the US. A family can reach $2000-5000/month. Then, you are still sometimes left holding the bag for deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance and annual out-of-pocket maximums. Old but not way off: [1]. Some folks are better off on the private markets, especially exchanges.

[1] https://www.bankrate.com/finance/insurance/cobra-health-insu...

> A COBRA plan can be about ~$500-1000 for an individual in the US. A

A COBRA plan is just continuation of the same plan, at the same cost (except that the ex-employee now covers whatever part was paid by the employer), as you had when employed.

> Some folks are better off on the private markets, especially exchanges.

Rarely for an equivalent quality plan if they were in a large group plan, which are usually better than individual plans, even exchange plans, on a cost/benefit basis. Excluding, of course, consideration of exchange subsidies if the ex-employee would qualify based on their reduced income.

Anecdotally, my employer's group health plan costs ~$650/month for just me. A roughly equivalent plan on the NY exchange is ~$750~900/month (my insurer doesn't participate in the NY exchange and also my employer customized my health plan so there's no direct comparison either way). So there's definitely some savings present.

Oh it looks insane to Americans too.

In the future, you should just look into temporary insurance. Almost every insurer offers temporary plans that you can buy for 1-6 months of coverage to handle a gap between jobs. Unless you have some reason to keep your COBRA coverage (e.g. regular appointments for a chronic condition), the temp insurance acts as good emergency coverage and for very small amounts (last time I did it, ~$250 total for 3 months coverage)

Yeah, most people don't realize that you have 90 days to elect COBRA retroactively after you leave a job. They'll reimburse all your expenses incurred during that time period under the program as if you'd had it the whole time. Once you pay the premiums, of course.

So you basically get 90 days "free" COBRA, but your deductible is 1, 2 or 3 months premiums.