Suppose your employer is less than ideal but you’re not particularly confident in your ability to get another job should you be laid off. A lot of people feel trapped in this situation every day.
Not everyone has the skills and experience to be in demand. A lot of people feel their current job is the only thing standing between them and the food stamp line. These people should not have to worry about getting sick and losing everything after losing their job.
Not all providers and plans are the same, so some treatment for some health condition you have that is 75% paid for by insurance might go down to 25% or even 0% (not covered) with your new employer's health insurance plan. You also might just not have another job to go to immediately, like what happened at the beginning of Covid-19, in which you'd either need to pay for your previous insurance in full or cancel treatment.
This happened recently to someone I know. They were offered a significant pay bump and a leadership position in a well-respected organization that lines up with their personal goals, but the new employer doesn’t offer insurance.
They eventually decided to take the job, but having to even consider healthcare access in that calculus is ridiculous.
No. They offer what they offer. Even when plans seem similar, are you willing to pay out of pocket for a $4k/month medicine that you've been taking for years and only paying $250/month now for, all because the new insurance doesn't cover it?
This is even more pronounced with lower-wage employees. I didn't switch jobs for years because of benefits: At best, I'd have to pay for COBRA for 60-90 days, which would basically take all of my money and then some. But mine was also fairly cheap and I had good coverage, something that similar jobs usually didn't match.
I do not leave my current employer specifically because of health insurance. No other employer in the area provides comparable coverage. It would take about a $30,000.00 per year premium to get me to even consider leaving. Healthcare is my number one consideration on all employment decisions.
Before 2014 plans were required to cover pre-existing conditions as long as you had “prior credible coverage” and didn’t have a lapse in coverage for more than a short period of time.
If you let coverage lapse, plans were allowed to impose a waiting period before coverage for the existing condition would start.
Since 2014, the “fix” is that now it’s just required to always have insurance, or else you pay a penalty.
Then for the last couple years the penalty was repealed but the coverage for pre-existing conditions is still guaranteed, which does open up a hazard that people will only buy insurance after they get sick... but really the risk of a sudden health issue is still high enough that most healthy people will still want coverage.
