Unless they have ample savings, when people lose their jobs they lose their health insurance. Half of all unemployed Americans went without coverage last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Many who then suffered a serious illness lost their homes. Such is the American health care system in what could blessedly be its terminal stages.

President-elect Barack Obama rightly believes that the nation's health care crisis can't be separated from its economic woes. He and former senator Tom Daschle, his pick for Health and Human Services secretary, intend to make health care reform an integral part of the economic rescue package that will be the new administration's first order of business.

In a pioneering approach - and an attempt to outflank pharmaceutical, health care and insurance industry efforts to block changes - the incoming administration is using the vast network of supporters it built during Obama's long campaign as a force for change. More than 4,200 house parties are being held across the country between Dec. 15 and the end of the month to brainstorm about health care and build support for reform. Each will send the administration its suggestions.

No program has been laid out, but Daschle and members of Congress who are deeply involved in the reform effort have named several areas likely to be included in an economic stimulus package that could total more than $500 billion. Some of that money will be used to help health care providers catch up with information technology and put all medical records in electronic form. The plan also calls for reauthorizing the SCHIP program of subsidized insurance for low-income children for two or three years, and increasing federal Medicaid payments to states.

None of those changes, however, will directly assist the unemployed who are not yet poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. One proposal, by California Rep. Pete Stark, would. He wants to tame the federal COBRA insurance rules, making it easier for laid-off workers to continue to receive health coverage under their previous plans.

Ex-workers who previously had employer-provided health insurance now have the option under federal COBRA laws to keep their coverage for up to 18 months after leaving their jobs - as long as they pay the full cost plus a small premium to cover administrative costs. Trouble is, that cost is often out of reach. On average, workers with employer-provided health insurance pay about 16 percent of costs that nationally, in 2008, averaged $4,700 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. The price in New England, where health care is more expensive, is even higher.

Judging by December's initial unemployment compensation filings, nearly 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs so far year this year including 30,000 in the week ending Dec. 20 alone. Few of them can afford to make COBRA payments, since unemployment compensation benefits in almost every state are too small to provide the rest of life's necessities.

Stark wants the Obama administration to extend the COBRA period and to subsidize the payments for those who cannot afford them. Such a subsidy makes sense, but only until some comprehensive form of affordable health insurance becomes available to all.

The unemployed aren't the only ones who lack health insurance. The ties between employment and health care have been severed for countless people in and out of the workforce. Any plan to address the nation's grave health care ills must fix both problems.