Iowa insurance market collapse could ground young entrepreneurs' dreams

The reason we need to fix health care is simple: if you are dying or seriously injured, and you don't have health insurance, you are going to the ER regardless and someone, somewhere will end up paying for it. Let's all be adults about the situation and just implement something that works.

PEOs help early stage companies to a certain extent, but for a pre-revenue company the cost of healthcare is almost always going to be a significant burden that funnels valuable cash away from the product and shortens the runway. But without a decent benefits package, start-ups have almost no hope of attracting key talent especially if those prospective employees have kids, so they (and their investors) are forced to just suck it up.

Healthcare in the US is a ticking time bomb with the potential to significantly impact our long term growth (if it isn't already). Unfortunately we're in a situation where for-profit insurance companies, for-profit health networks, and for-profit pharma companies are all fighting for their share of the pie while pushing increasing costs onto the average consumer. I wish I knew what the fix was - other than an unattainable single-payer system - but we need to find something and find it fast.

A big chunk of Washington firmly believes that socialized medicine is evil, and they will fight it. It doesn't matter what the facts are, it's part of their identity at this point.

For the rest, the desires of insurance companies and similar get in the way. For example, the main, perhaps only reason the ACA didn't include a public option is because Joe Lieberman, Senator from a state where the health insurance industry is huge, refused to vote for a bill that included it and his vote was required for passage.

If lawmakers wanted to fix things, it would be easy: study the systems of other first-world countries and incorporate the things that work best into ours. But "something that works well" is way down on the list of priorities.

For all the issues of the US healthcare system, one thing it has going for it is most of the new developments in medicine comes from the US.

Casinos use chips and vouchers to distract gamblers from actually grasping just how much money they're playing with. Health insurance sure feels like the same thing, but it's even worse in that when you're in need, you're not always in a state of mind to make rational choices nor are those choices even adequately defined prior to receiving a bill. Why is this acceptable? Since when are contracts entered into under duress admissible? I suspect it's probably a massive success on the part of lobbyists.

I don't know the solution, but I can confidently say it's probably not reached by tackling the insurance side of healthcare. Maybe the current system needs to collapse under its own weight before a new approach even stands a chance? Unfortunately, it's probably more likely it'd just receive a government bailout at taxpayers' expense so it could continue the status quo.