>> (2) 100% free medical (few SW engineers apply, but most who are laid off would be eligible, if they cared)

Could you explain this one? Do you mean via medicaid?

Good call. I assumed COBRA, which is not free but the company will sometimes cover the premia for laid-off employees.

Medicaid (see my answer below). I was shocked to find out I qualified given my income level in the past year, but since I made no money, it was free for my wife and kids and i had to pay a heavily subsidized rate for marketplace insurance, with no expected pay back now that my income is back to normal. I honestly think that the 'America has no social programs' trope that is often parroted by online personalities does a lot of harm in that it discourages people from applying. I applied originally as a joke to show my very fiscally-conservative mother that it is hard to get on to government welfare programs, but I was shocked at how easy it was.

Yes. So my parents told me about this. But in the past, I paid for COBRA. Huge mistake. This time (as part of the layoffs at the beginning of the year that many engineers faced), my mom told me that Medicaid is freely available, and I'd be stupid to pay for COBRA. She's very conservative and one of those 'look at all these people taking advantage of government program types', so I thought she was making it up at first.

However, I looked it up, and she was right. Plugged in my numbers into healthcae.gov, and I got a call from medicaid the next day. Even though I had made the equivalent of >240k per-annum based just on my January income (was laid off in Jan), I qualified for medicaid for my kids immediately (my wife and I would have qualified in a few months in my state due to how they count income, but in the meantime, qualified for a heavily subsidized rate). Medicaid in my state takes income by the week, so since I made no money in the week, my income was considered zero, so my kids got free medical. Some time later we found out my wife is pregnant, so she was also covered by medicaid.

A few things. Firstly, I explicitly called out to the medicaid guy how much money I was expecting to make (almost 300k), as well as how much savings I had. He told me it didn't matter since I made zero in the past week, and medicaid is by the week. Secondly, I explicitly asked, since I expected to make a shit ton of money this year, if I had to pay it back. He said no. Even if I were to make a million dollars this year or a billion, I would never owe anything for those months we were on medicaid.

Of course, I also qualified for unemployment, but that income put us below the medicaid threshold.

Medicaid was better than our private insurance (which was itself a posh PPO plan). I know this because my youngest daughter ended up in the hospital twice and needed an ambulance ride. The november ride cost us more than a thousand. The medicaid ride was free. All things considered, especially given my new job, we saved a good amount of money being laid off.

At the end of it all, I got a new job in April and the new insurance kicked in in May. It was actually hard to get off medicaid since they didn't really have a way to do that (I guess it's not 'intended' for those making a lot of money with periods of unemployment). We had to struggle to explain to the state we didn't need their money anymore and were insured. They insisted on keeping us insured anyway. I was okay with this but my wife thought we shouldn't squander state funds, so she called regularly and finally got through to someone who would cancel it for us (I had already sent in my income change notification forms, but whatever system they had in place didn't remove me).

> been laid off many times

How does one end up being laid off many times? Have you had a long career or do you specifically seek out high-risk high-reward jobs?

Or just the roll of the dice?

High-risk high-reward. Lots of startups. Some succeed. Some go under.

Not the op but, I've seen this for lots of reasons.

Sometimes just a roll of the dice. Large companies tend to lay off more. If you've only worked in startups, it's very possible you may never be laid off. I've never been laid off despite working 20 years in industry.

Working in banks, FAGMAN, etc, you are much more likely to be laid off. I guess you could consider that high-risk, but those jobs are low-risk overall imo, because they pay a lot more than startups.

Yeah those were great years. Now in case of a downturn you will lose it all, maybe when you need the most (old age). Let's not even get into the details of your "100% free medical".

Rights enshrined by legislation are worth a bit more than individual agreements

> Let's not even get into the details of your "100% free medical".

My 100% free medical is enshrined by the law in my state, which sets the eligibility guidelines for medicaid. Please stop parroting misinformation and discouraging people from using the available welfare programs. So many people I've spoken with thought I was crazy for applying to medicaid and didn't do so themselves because they thought they wouldn't be eligible, but they would have been.

The thread is a comparison between the US and Europe. You are the one pushing an extreme anecdote - your own personal experience, valid in one US state -, when in reality we know for a fact that on average you can expect much better benefits in Europe, regardless of your employer.

There is a price for that, of course, but to try to claim that the US is better in this particular area is a weak argument. When you use a personal anecdote, it becomes ridiculous.

> There is a price for that, of course, but to try to claim that the US is better in this particular area is a weak argument. When you use a personal anecdote, it becomes ridiculous.

Given that my anecdote is not about particular policies (although in my state, the public medical is protected as much as any European state), but rather the big picture, and given that American software are typically richer than their European counterparts, I think it's pretty clear that we can make that claim.