How difficult is it navigating having a chronic illness with a HMO plan?

So, I’m going full-time into my business at the beginning of 2025, so I went to my state’s insurance marketplace to look at plans. They only have HMO plans in my area, which is really frustrating and unfortunate. I’ve never dealt with one before, so I’m anxious at the thought of having to make sure I have referrals for all my specialists. I’m also not sure if authorizations for certain procedures are more difficult on a HMO plan. I get a biyearly (2x a year) infusion that is very expensive without insurance.

My other option is to do COBRA, and keep the current plan I have through my job at the moment. With that, I know I wouldn’t have to worry about changing anything, and I know things would be covered, but I also know it’d probably be more expensive.

The HMO plan is about 375 a month, and I’m guesstimating that I do COBRA, it’ll be 600+ dollars a month.

Now, I do eventually want to move from my area to a different part of the state. Hopefully in 2025. When I played around with zipcodes when looking at plans, the area that I want to move to had way more options for health insurance, and had EPO in addition to HMO plans.

So I’m thinking I may do COBRA and then hopefully move and switch to an EPO plan, but I don’t have a exact time. I guess essentially I’m weighing peace of mind over money and looking for advice. Thank you.