Comparing COBRA to marketplace

I made a recent post regarding questions about COBRA, but in my research realized I may also be able to do marketplace coverage that would likely be much less expensive.

Basically, according to my previous employer my health insurance coverage will end on 7/10/2023, and unfortunately my new coverage from my new employer won’t start until 8/1/2023. Normally I would just try to ride it out and use COBRA retroactively if needed, but my wife is pregnant and due to previous history of complications she has more frequent OB visits and more frequent testing…all quite expensive. On top of that we have two young children.

My question is at what should I be looking? I went through the marketplace with decent income estimates and it is showing monthly premiums ranging from ~$700-$2,000 per month. In comparison I have been told that COBRA will cost ~$2,500 per month. No one in the family has met their individual deductible, nor has the family deductible been met. I don’t expect my wife will meet her current deductible during the month of July either (she still has several thousand dollars to go). In comparison, she obviously isn’t going to meet the deductible of a healthcare marketplace plan in a single month either.

So, should I just be comparing the marketplace monthly premium to the monthly COBRA cost? The lowest marketplace premium I can purchase is $689.92, and that is for the whole family. Conceivably I could look into the cost for just my wife, and have myself and the kids ride it out for 3 weeks…but that is a gamble.

NOTE: we can afford the $2,500 COBRA cost, but with a baby coming in August we will have that cost on a brand new health insurance (new deductible and out-of-pocket maximum). I want to balance coverage with cost, but I don’t see how the deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums really matter unless my wife were to go into preterm labor…which hasn’t occurred with any of the three previous pregnancies.