I make about 35k a year. I have great benefits like several weeks of PTO (non-accrued either, it renews every January 1st), remote work and most importantly, cheap health insurance (well $120/mo but considering that my same plan would be about $700/mo if I bought if off the marketplace, I consider that cheap lol).
I deal with a very aggressive case of psoriasis that, before getting medicated, was spreading by the week and was literally on my eyelids. The medicine I take is currently about $7,000/mo sticker price. Even with my insurance's portion paid, I'd still be on the hook for $3,500/mo. Since I have insurance at all, I qualify for a discount card that lets me pay $5-20/mo, which is much more friendly to my finances lol.
However if I didn't have the insurance plan, like say if I lost my job, then I'd be responsible for the full amount (the pharmacy literally told me this without missing a beat). COBRA is an option, yes, but if I'm suddenly unemployed then I can't realistically pay the $700/mo plus whatever surcharge they add when I'm suddenly worrying about how I'll afford my other bills.
The next job will likely have insurance, yes. But I don't know their carrier or coverage levels. I'm only with my current pharmacy because of my specific insurance carrier (I don't really know why nor was I in the mood to dig for answers at the time) thus changing insurance carriers would mean going through the whole song and dance of submitting prior authorizations, claim approvals/denials which need a certain amount of appeals, getting paperwork back and forth in this bureaucratic ping-pong fuckery that is American healthcare, etc.
I don't know how long I can go without my medicine before the patches show back up again, nor do I really care to find out because this shit was not only painful, but embarrassing because it was on my goddamn face.
This getting long and quite ranty, but I really wish I was easily able to job hop like most people my age group seem to be doing and recommending. Every time someone tells me to job hop when I express displeasure about my low earnings, I feel stuck because of what's mentioned above. Watching people bounce from job to job doubling or earning their earning power in X amount of years makes me feel like I'm stuck in a pit with a huge iron ball chained to my ankle. The other benefits I could begrudgingly sacrifice for higher pay, but my health is a much bigger sacrifice to play around with.