People can quit their job, and then meet their needs using their savings (if they have any), or welfare. The same is not true for health insurance.

They can't get health insurance on healthcare.gov?

There are two options after losing your job. Cobra or healthcare.gov.

Cobra will allow you to keep your current plan, for my family that would have been ~$800 per month.

Healthcare.gov rates are based on your income, or what it was, or what you expect it to be. Which for me was ~$700.

So there is no way to get affordable insurance to cover the gap in employment in a way that preserves cash reserves.

You're contradicting yourself by claiming it's tied to employment and then saying you can buy it for a price.

It's one or the other.

Or you can claim the price makes it effectively tied to employment.

I agree the cultural ties it has to employment ought to end, but that's a peculiarity of the american system, not a fundamental feature of a private healthcare system.

>So there is no way to get affordable insurance to cover the gap in employment in a way that preserves cash reserves.

I fail to see how it's any different than "there is no way to get affordable housing/food to cover the gap in employment in a way that preserves cash reserves". I suppose you could argue that with housing/food your costs stay the same regardless of your employment status, but from a finance perspective it's still the same. There's no difference between losing a $6000/month paycheck and losing a $5500/month paycheck and $500/month in insurance subsidies.