Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

sciencedirect.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 148 posts

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#101

Post by anamax »

jonknee wrote: post #22
hugh4life wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republicans have been trying to kill employer based health care forever... it's the unions responsible for it.

But they don't want to replace it with anything other than everyone buys their insurance on the open market if they want coverage, which is why unions are against it. If they wanted to move to a full coverage system (single payer?), unions would be happy because everyone has healthcare.

> If they wanted to move to a full coverage system (single payer?), unions would be happy because everyone has healthcare.

Citation needed.

Yes, the health care employers unions have expressed considerable interest in measures that would increase the demand for their members' services, but you're making a very different claim.

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#102

Post by sethg »

groaner wrote: post #10

This 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 h…

As champion says below, everyone in Massachusetts can get health insurance, regardless of pre-existing conditions. You can go to https://www.mahealthconnector.org/portal/site/connector/ and see what plans are available, and how much they cost, for someone your age. Or you can hang on until 2014, and something similar will be available throughout the US.

If you want to see if you qualify for immigration to Canada as a skilled worker, http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/assess/index.... has an online test. (I just took the test for the hell of it, and I qualified, even though I don’t have a Canadian job offer in hand and je parle français comme une vache espagnole.)

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#103

Post by anamax »

rdouble wrote: post #85
mcculley wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think context is important. As a US citizen I agree with the general sentiment that the US government isn't competent to run healthcare. Comparisons with Canada and the UK are not helpful because they are different kinds of governments. The notion in the US that government should be as small as possible has yielded a government which cannot be trusted. The proponents of a single payer system in the US don't address…

As a US citizen I agree with the general sentiment that the US government isn't competent to run healthcare. The VA hospitals are actually very well run.

> The VA hospitals are actually very well run.

Some VA facilities are well run, some aren't. (And some are a mix - Walter Reed, which is where CongressCritters go, had some horrific wards as of a couple of years ago.)

The Indian Health Care service, on the other hand, is a complete horrorshow.

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#104

Post by sethg »

harold wrote: post #43
hugh4life wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they wouldn't be happy with that... they would get waivers from the single payer system... just like 650 of the 773 ObamaCare waivers currently go to unions.

This list does indeed appear to be a veritable who's who of the president's campaign supporters. Seems hypocritical to me. If it's good enough for the rest of us, it should be good enough for them too. http://www.hhs.gov/ociio/regulations/approved_applications_f...

Were there opponents of the current administration who applied for waivers and were turned down, even though they had exactly the same circumstances as supporters who got their waiver applications approved?

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#105

Post by gte910h »

anamax wrote: post #98
mcculley wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, individuals cannot buy health insurance for the same rates that employers pay. Some individuals cannot buy health insurance at all if they have preexisting conditions.

> Some individuals cannot buy health insurance at all if they have preexisting conditions. That's true only if they let their insurance lapse. As long as they don't do that, they can stay with their current, switch, etc, all without waiting periods or a significant premium relative to "well people". (It's been that way for years.) That's why I wouldn't let insurance lapse if I had a pre-existing condition, so why do…

>That's true only if they let their insurance lapse. As long as they don't do that, they can stay with their current, switch, etc, all without waiting periods or a significant premium relative to "well people". (It's been that way for years.)

On individual and even small group (or medium size groups) they up your premiums, often by a lot of you have something big done, possibly beyond the point of payment. So yes, "if you lapse it goes" is true, often the COST of insurance goes up 10x if something happens to you and you don't happen to be able to be kicked out on another technicality.

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#106

Post by bhousel »

danssig wrote: post #90
dangrossman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you can just pick what to call them. An employee is an employee and a contractor is a contractor. If you want someone to work in your office 9-5 and commit their code changes to your server each day, they're an employee, and you can't call them a contractor.

I think you can actually. EDIT: What's with the downvotes? Companies do call them a contractor. It happens every day. They're are special concerns but they can certainly work 9-5, etc.

You are basically right. There are companies specifically set up to allow employers to hire contractors but treat them as employees. Search for "Employer of Portable Record"

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#107

Post by icey »

dnautics wrote: post #56
Loic wrote: post #51

For information, here in Germany, from where I run my startup which itself is a UK Limited, I provide my employees with full health insurance (teeth, sick days, everything), pension, unemployment insurance, etc. for basically €700/month for an after tax salary of about €2500/month. As soon as you start to factor in all the costs of insurance, etc., doing business in the old Europe is pretty cheap. Even in Denmark, wh…

Why don't you believe in a free market for health insurance? Forcing people to pay into a health insurance is kind of scammy - let's say that I have a genetic condition that is certain to kill me rapidly at age 30. I want to live my life to the fullest, and I'd rather not be forced to buy health insurance that protects me from things like adult onset diabetes, alzheimer's, cancer, parkinson's, etc, that I'm just not…

> Why should I be forced to pony up for other people's healthcare, too?

This entire argument is predicated on the idea that people who decide not to buy insurance will actually stay home when they get so sick that they feel their life is in danger, instead of going to the hospital.

History has shown that's not the case; they end up in the emergency room with no insurance, and end up being a cost that hospitals have to recoup via higher rates for the people that have paid for their insurance.

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#108

Post by dnautics »

DrJokepu wrote: post #95
dnautics wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you believe in a free market for health insurance? Forcing people to pay into a health insurance is kind of scammy - let's say that I have a genetic condition that is certain to kill me rapidly at age 30. I want to live my life to the fullest, and I'd rather not be forced to buy health insurance that protects me from things like adult onset diabetes, alzheimer's, cancer, parkinson's, etc, that I'm just not…

> Why don't you believe in a free market for health insurance? There are two main reasons. First of all, as someone mentioned it in another thread here a few days ago, healthcare does not follow the rules of supply and demand, since people would pay anything for survival. You're never going to say that "ah this treatment is a bit overpriced; I think I'll get more value for my money if I'll just die instead". It's rid…

>It's called compassion and it is a cornerstone of our civilization.

compassion does not occur when someone forces you to pay into a system. If you want to be compassionate, pay out of your own pocket. Do not take out of someone else's pocket for charity and pat yourself on the back for being 'compassionate'. That is the opposite of compassion, it is total selfishness.

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#109

Post by mcculley »

anamax wrote: post #98
mcculley wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, individuals cannot buy health insurance for the same rates that employers pay. Some individuals cannot buy health insurance at all if they have preexisting conditions.

> Some individuals cannot buy health insurance at all if they have preexisting conditions. That's true only if they let their insurance lapse. As long as they don't do that, they can stay with their current, switch, etc, all without waiting periods or a significant premium relative to "well people". (It's been that way for years.) That's why I wouldn't let insurance lapse if I had a pre-existing condition, so why do…

I have employees who were laid off from their previous jobs. They could not afford to pay the COBRA payment and let their insurance lapse. They are now disqualified from private insurance and have pre-existing conditions that are not covered under our group plan.

It is easy to tell people not to let their insurance lapse. If they have no income, this is not feasible.

The point of the article is that the current system inhibits entrepreneurship. Plenty of employees in the current system stay with their employer out of fear of losing their coverage instead of pursuing other opportunities.

Re: Is employer-based health insurance a barrier to entrepreneurship?

#110

Post by dnautics »

icey wrote: post #107
dnautics wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you believe in a free market for health insurance? Forcing people to pay into a health insurance is kind of scammy - let's say that I have a genetic condition that is certain to kill me rapidly at age 30. I want to live my life to the fullest, and I'd rather not be forced to buy health insurance that protects me from things like adult onset diabetes, alzheimer's, cancer, parkinson's, etc, that I'm just not…

> Why should I be forced to pony up for other people's healthcare, too? This entire argument is predicated on the idea that people who decide not to buy insurance will actually stay home when they get so sick that they feel their life is in danger, instead of going to the hospital. History has shown that's not the case; they end up in the emergency room with no insurance, and end up being a cost that hospitals have t…

"History has shown that's not the case; they end up in the emergency room with no insurance, and end up being a cost that hospitals have to recoup via higher rates for the people that have paid for their insurance."

No. That is not "history". This is a recent phenomenon. This sort of thing was not generally occurring 30 years ago.

Post reply on HN