Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
sciencedirect.com
Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
1–10 of 148 posts
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#2[deleted]
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#3yes
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#4I remember an episode where this american life explained why health insurance came to be like it is.
I was specifically interested in the fact that they said during WWII wages where not allowed to increase, so the only things that employers could increase were benefits. This was the biggest factor in making Health Insurance employer-based.
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#5We've been working on a startup and this has been a constant worry for us. I imagine that a lot of startups are one car crash away or one sickness away from failing.
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#6During our initial phases we lost a potential hire that we really wanted because we just couldn't afford to offer health insurance. They ended up taking a job with a similar startup in Toronto. We had our first hire leave primarily because we couldn't offer health insurance.
I'm happy that we're in a place that we can offer those benefits now. Getting through those first couple of years was really tough. If my wife didn't have decent insurance I'm not sure my company would exist today.
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#7I remember an episode where this american life explained why health insurance came to be like it is. I was specifically interested in the fact that they said during WWII wages where not allowed to increase, so the only things that employers could increase were benefits. This was the biggest factor in making Health Insurance employer-based.
Also having it be a tax write-off. If an employee were to buy it on their own it would be with after tax dollars and thus much more costly. (That's even discounting group rate discounts.)
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#8Answer: Hell yes. Self-insurance is absurdly expensive while group insurance outside of an employer or credit union is harder to find than a Republican with a conscience.
The lie that "Obama-Care kills small businesses and/or jobs" is a smokescreen for the truth: Healthcare reform would free employees from indentured health care servitude and allow small businesses to hire more competitively, creating more jobs.
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#9We've been working on a startup and this has been a constant worry for us. I imagine that a lot of startups are one car crash away or one sickness away from failing.
The second part of that statement is that a lot of individuals are one car crash or one sickness away from suffering a serious financial hardship on top of a serious medical issue. If the startup suffers, it's collateral damage.
Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?
#10This grumbling keeps coming up here, so I just have to ask: how feasible is it for a young American like me to just pick up and leave for a place that does have a sane health care system, and work on whatever I want?
As far as I can tell, these places tend to have fairly steep immigration/visa hurdles to overcome, usually involving some kind of employer sponsorship (presumably to deter freeloaders?).
If anyone here has done this, I'd love to hear your stories.