COBRA is an extension of your ex-employer's healthcare program that you pay out of pocket.

You have always had the option to either buy COBRA or buy individual coverage on your own. Often it is cheaper to buy individual coverage through private insurers than to buy COBRA, especially if you're willing to settle for catastrophic-only insurance.

Obamacare is a new Marketplace for buying individual coverage that includes regulations on the types of coverage offered and includes subsidies if you make less than $46k over a tax year. Since Obamacare doesn't offer bare-bones catastrophic insurance it will often be cheaper to buy outside the Obamacare marketplace if you're not getting a subsidy.

Obamacare also has the awful anti-consumer feature called "Open Enrollment Period" which means you can only buy Obamacare insurance between November and February of every year, which makes it useless if you get laid off now.

Private insurance has always had the chance of being cheaper if you could get it - COBRA's advantage was in cases with preexisting conditions.

Since this is in the context of COBRA, the ACA has something called a Qualifying Life Event that includes changes in income, family size and state of residence. With those, there's a good chance you'll qualify for a Special Enrollment Period and be able to purchase coverage (though you might still keep COBRA for a month until the new coverage kicks in).

There may also be some limitations on the non-exchange catastrophic plans that will curtail their availability in the future - I haven't paid attention to this, but one of the "Obamacare killed my insurance coverage!" issues was that the ACA mandated certain minimum levels of coverage or service and the plans that were being killed off were ones that didn't meet those minimums. After the outcry I believe there were some deadline extensions to grandfather in existing plans, but those will end at some point.

Actually, if you experience a "qualifying event" such as job loss, marriage, or having a baby, you can enroll under something called a Special Enrollment Period. (Private group employer plans also have open enrollment and qualifying event enrollment). For example, https://www.healthcare.gov/screener/marketplace.html?state=V...

COBRA is not only for health insurance. It also includes other insurance such as dental and vision. ACA only covers health insurance.

COBRA is still relevant for health insurance if you employer offers to cover part of health insurance premium for certain duration after being laid off. In this situation, you will come out ahead with COBRA than ACA. Also, ACA doesn't cover vision and dental for which you will need to go through COBRA to get decent coverage with too much restrictions.

Except the healthcare MSFT has is probably way better than anything you will get on the individual market. So you aren't in the terrible position you were before ACA, but you are still in a less good position.