What to factor in for health insurance and the cost of a baby with timelines and changes: job / grad school / moving states

Looking for advice on what to think about and plan for in health insurance as my wife and I prepare for pregnancy and having a child.

In our timeline for getting pregnant and birth, I'll still be a grad student who just graduated when my wife gives birth ( 2 years left) . I'll have a gap of about 2 months after graduating before starting work in healthcare so seemed like a good time for her to have the child. Based on our age, we hope to be pregnant to align with that time, making things a little tricky. We also plan to move states after I graduate to be closer to family which also means my wife may have to quit her job around that time. Some factors we are thinking about.

My wife is salaried admin, who wants to change jobs right now and is looking, and so we don't know what exact quality/details of that next health insurance will be or what to watch out for the most. Like if she's offered a job, do you just ask the potential employer "what's your health insurance like – please send me the plan PDF" My school insurance doesn't allow open enrollment except for when you first begin your studies (so missed that) and I'm not sure the qualifying events really offer much option to add her. The cost was like $600/month additional even if we could/do find a way. If we assume we will use my wife's job's insurance, whatever that is, and then we get ready to move, use Cobra, we'll just map out that cost. We wondered what is appropriate with her work in that hypothetical scenario if she is working and goes on maternity leave, coming back to work, but if they aren't interested in remote, and we want to move states …if she's just gonna have to quit but worry if that burns a bridge. If we waited until I started my first job in healthcare, I wasn't sure the new insurance would cover my wife's pregnancy as a "pre exiting condition". But I wondered about this and altering the timeline a little. Based on my wife's age, and our preference we didn't really want to wait until I started that job to then get pregnant. submitted by /u/bigben404
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