It didn’t seem like such a big deal, just a prescription headache medication Richard Eggers’ wife took for a while but no longer uses.

But it became a big deal after Eggers lost his job in telecom sales last October and began shopping for an alternative to the $800-a-month premium he’s paying for his family’s COBRA extended health-insurance coverage.

“Prescriptions seem to be the biggest issue in getting (individual) insurance,” said Eggers, 43, of Costa Mesa, Calif. “She can’t get any prescription coverage.”

That came as a shock to Eggers, whose last experience shopping for health insurance happened after he lost his job 12 years ago, when he was newly married and his three children had not yet been born.

“There were no real qualifications,” he recalled. “It seems they just wrote it, and it was done.”

Not anymore.

Millions of Americans who have been laid off in the past few years are learning for the first time that the health insurance they once took for granted is now hard to come by, especially at a reasonable price. COBRA is a federal law that requires employers with 20 or more workers to offer continued health benefits, but it often is too expensive for people who are unemployed.

The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports independent research on health and social issues, reported that, nationwide, COBRA premiums in 2001 averaged $225 a month for individuals and $583 monthly for families.

In most cases, finding alternative coverage isn’t insurmountable, said Tracy Lyon, a Mission Viejo, Calif., independent insurance agent and financial adviser, but people need to recognize that health insurance should be one of the first things they address after losing a job, not the last.

Too often, she said, people come to her a week before their COBRA benefits end. “They don’t realize it can take up to six weeks to get into another plan,” she said.

And things some people consider minor can create unexpected obstacles.

Susan Moore of Anaheim, Calif., thought she’d just get an individual plan from Blue Cross, which had provided her group coverage before she lost her job as a materials manager in 1999.

“In my total naivete about how things work, I thought it would be no big deal,” recalled Moore, who is 50. “I thought, ‘I’m reasonably healthy, never used my health insurance except for an annual checkup.”‘

That’s not how Blue Cross saw it.

“They didn’t like my height-to-weight ratio,” Moore said. “I’m overweight, but not so much that I would drop dead walking down the street.”

Lyon said unemployed workers have several options for health insurance that may better fit their scaled-down budgets, even with COBRA.

For instance, your former employer may allow you to be on COBRA and switch to a cheaper plan, like an HMO, during the annual open-enrollment period.

If there is a family member who has a medical condition that would preclude private coverage, some companies will allow you to have only that person on the group COBRA. You could get an individual plan for everyone else.

Lyon said the unemployed also shouldn’t be scared off by the idea of an individual plan even though there may be some compromises.

“Individual plans usually are less expensive than group plans, but the benefits usually are not as good,” she said.

Individual plans also may be a good choice for someone in this uncertain economy, where a new job might not work out and end before a person becomes eligible for COBRA. The individual plan would guarantee continued coverage.

Lyon advises people to seek long-term insurance instead of a temporary plan.

“I know a lot of people who thought they’d find a job in 12 months, and 18 months later they are still looking,” she said.

Most important, said Lyon, don’t try to go without insurance, even if you are the epitome of health.

She uses her own situation as an example. Last year she was unexpectedly diagnosed with what was believed to be ovarian cancer. Cost of her hospital treatment: $33,000. Then at the end of the year, she had to have her gall bladder removed. Cost: $45,000.

A 1999 study published in the New York University Law Review said about half of people who file for bankruptcy had medical problems and expenses.

“You need the insurance,” she said. “Otherwise, all your assets could be depleted.”