Come for the Ride…

The very last thing my ex-employer said to me before walking out the door was “Your health insurance will run out at the end of the month. You must tell us before then if you want to continue your coverage on COBRA.”

I am fortunately one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have major medical problems (knock on wood), and within the last 5 years I’ve suffered one serious cold. However, the option for COBRA from the jobs I’ve left has always intrigued me. First of all, why is it called COBRA? Aren’t cobras bad?

Ever since I was a little kid, I was told to avoid cobras; not that I was living in a jungle or a desert or wherever these snakes lived, but my teacher was nice enough to tell me “IF you see one, walk away slowly.” My learnings were reaffirmed when watching G.I. Joe — Americans fight cobras. (Or at least with my limited English, that’s what I gathered.)

So what’s the deal? I feel like the program is a scam. What you used to pay for to cover your butt now costs 10x more… and fittingly, this special perk comes while you’re unemployed. Yippie for the jobless! (I guess) Seriously, what thoughtful person came up with this program?

You may argue that “COBRA stands for something dummy!” To which I researched and found that it stood for: Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Yeah, WTF is that and how is that remotely medical related? I think someone picked the word COBRA first (this is how we can symbolize picking off the weak), and then came up with some random words to fill the letters so that word could be an acronym.

Sure, I can do that too:

SPAM - sh*t passed as meat
SCUM - secret club of unsanitary men
and so on…

So… does anyone even use this thing? There’s gotta be a better way.

If you like this post the please consider subscribing to our full RSS feed.

Save to del.icio.us | Digg This! | Share on Facebook | reddit
Stumble It! |