Well, you can pay for the insurance (one way or another) or you can self-insure out of your own savings. It's not magic. Paying the country to take a week off

Well, you can pay for the insurance (one way or another) or you can self-insure out of your own savings. It's not magic. Paying the country to take a week off would cost something on the order of $125 billion, to say nothing of the knock-on effects. In any case, there is a minuscule number people who are unable to work because of COVID-19 relative to the total number of people unable to work on a short-term basis for all other reasons.