in-between jobs health insurance strategy (Health Exchange question – NYS)

My wife worked for a company (actually a health insurance company) for almost 12 years. Because she worked for the company, she got a decent deal on our insurance, so we always used her employer provided coverage for our family of 4 because it was cheaper and decent enough.

Roll forward to August 1 of this year, she got laid off. As part of the separation agreement, she got 8 weeks of severance, and was allowed to keep her health insurance until September 30, which is the end of next week, so we’re strategizing our game plan.

She’s been job hunting and fortunately found something and was offered a position yesterday. Health Insurance benefits for the new company are good, but start almost 2 months after date of hire, so we’re going to need some sort of gap coverage for the meantime.

Cobra is expensive as hell. I think it goes from about $150 a month what she was paying before, to over $1900 a month. Definitely want to avoid that.

Going on my employer provided insurance is a last resort option, as I receive a pretty decent incentive payment for opting out of using it. It is an ordeal to get qualified for the incentive and I don’t think I would be able to get my incentive back if I signed back up for my insurance and then tried to opt out again approximately 2 months later (or even ever honestly given circumstances not relevant to this post).

So that leaves picking a plan on the state’s health exchange and making that our plan until the new coverage starts.

So, if we pick a plan on the exchange, would my wife’s new insurance eligibility be a qualifying event in order to leave the exchange after approximately 2 months? Anyone see any red flags here, or anything that might cause complications for us?

Thank you!