Picture the moment. You are 62. The retirement party happened. Somebody made a speech, there was a sheet cake, and you drove home with a plaque in the passenger seat.
Then Monday arrives and you open the mail, and there is a letter about COBRA, and the number on it is $1,847 a month.
For one person.
Welcome to the gap years. That stretch between the day your employer coverage ends and the morning you turn 65 is, for a lot of Americans, the single most expensive and least understood part of retiring.
It is also the reason a shocking number of people keep working jobs they no longer want. Not for the salary. For the insurance.
The good news, and there genuinely is some, is that the gap years are a solved problem. Not a cheap one. A solved one. There are four or five real paths through, the rules are public, and one of them involves a lever most people do not know they can pull.
Let's go through it.