Slashdot Mirror
Obamacare Could Help Fuel a Tech Start-Up Boom
dcblogs writes "The arrival of Obamacare may make it easier for some employees to quit their full-time jobs to launch tech start-ups, work as a freelance consultant, or pursue some other solo career path. Most tech start-up founders are older and need health insurance. 'The average age of people who create a tech start-up is 39, and not 20-something,' said Bruce Bachenheimer, who heads Pace University's Entrepreneurship Lab. Entrepreneurs are willing to take on risks, but health care is not a manageable risk, he said. 'There is a big difference between mortgaging your house on something you can control, and risking going bankrupt by an illness because of something you can't control,' said Bachenheimer. Donna Harris, the co-founder of the 1776 incubation platform in Washington, believes the healthcare law will encourage more start-ups. 'You have to know that there are millions of Americans who might be fantastic and highly successful entrepreneurs who are not pursuing that path because of how healthcare is structured,' said Harris"
Bachmann said Job Killing Regulations!
If th e US has a civilized Health Care system, I would start my own business much easier. Or join a start up without worrying about health care.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One of the things the haters don't get is how big an implicit tax we pay because we don't have universal health care. Other countries pay far less per person, with far less risk. You may not be thinking about it when you're 20 something and healthy, but in a moment you can lose everything because you're not covered.
I can't begin to imagine how many people I've worked with over the years that have only worked somewhere because of the health benefits. Make the health benefits no longer an issue and you gain better competition in the market for where people can work. Remove the barrier and all of a sudden a lot of places that previously would not have attracted enterprise class talent open up.
The fact that some of these places are starts ups is largely incidental. Think of it this way, something like 40% of fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants. Why? Because they were hardworking and didn't have anything holding them back.
I know I've turned down employment opportunities for a lack of viable health insurance for my family, I have to imagine that I'm far from the only one. What happens when people are no longer held back by this very practical concern and can go for broke like the immigrant entrepreneur?
Oh, sure. And we had prosperous booms without computers, too. That people succeeded without something isn't evidence that having it won't help them.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
That is a load of bull. Any startup would have to have 50+ employees before being required to offer health care. And then the cost under ACA is much less. Stop spreading your misinformed lies.
Like any other form of tax, Obamacare's net results will be negative in employment
As a truism, that's bullshit. And it's not even entertaining bullshit.
Let's pretend it was taken to it's logical extreme, aka a society with zero taxes. Also known as a society with no roads, no enforced laws, no food inspection, no building codes, etc. You really thing that's a better functioning society with increased employment? Now, obviously a society at the other extreme (100% taxes) is equally dysfunctional. Arguments can be made for lower taxes (and certainly better spent taxes), and arguments can be made for raising taxes in some circumstances (certainly worked in California lately), but to say lower taxes are always better is so stupid it's not even wrong.
If you say, have some disease, and it is cured, and you want health coverage, you are stuck in your present job with it's present health coverage. Change jobs, and ooopsies, it's a preexisting condition. So a friend of my spouse who had breast cancer, is stuck in her job. Because if it recurs, which isn't likely at this point, but possible, she is bankrupt.
And despite all the hate, there is a lit fuse in the present system. People without health care do get treatment for their illnesses and minor issues. They go to the Emergency room. There, they get the most expensive treatment available to people - emergency room care. Before my father passed away last year, he was in the emergency room three times. And it was a little strange. Most of the people there just seemed to have minor problems, like sore throats, colds, sick kids. I'd asked about that, and the eanswer was "it's poor folk with no insurance." But rest assured that it is paid for, by your's and my premiums, and by Government.
The problem is, as insurance costs go up, and people drop off the rolls, the emergency room will become more and more used for more and more people. A real positive feedback loop, Eventually no one except people who can pay for their medical bills out of hand will afford health insurance. Then, unless we are going to force peole to go without medical treatment, we'll have a bizzare form of universal coverage. Not a good idea at all.
Reading the opposition plan, it is some bafflegab about doing the same thing as we are doing now, except for more bafflegab about affordability.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I have a friend who had breast cancer, and who went through the entire course of treatment without paying a penny.
AND
I have another who suffered kidney failure and went through years of dialysis -- without paying a dime.
you are lying. Stop it. That not how it works. They only have to be sure you aren't dying right at that moment.
" provide essential care."
Incorrect, emergency care not essential care.
" If they take you to court, you can tell the judge: I was out of work for a year, I can afford to pay them $25 a month and that's it. The judge will almost always agree."
This is why hospitals have started selling their debt to 3rd parties. These 3rd parties can claim more, sue you, destroy your credit, garnish you wages.
"I've been in court and have watched it happen.
since everything else you say is factually wrong, I'm not going t believe this either.
I am a Former ER billing specialist, Now ER nurse.
Healthcare is one major reason I decided to move back to Canada and work in a self employed situation. Here people can work two part time jobs if they want, or start a business and not worry about having to buy into basic health care plans. Many companies do offer supplementary insurance though. Even our own family company is thinking of doing that.
Obviously freedom means different things to different people. Guess at least half the republican party sees things differently.
Read the laws again. The law merely requires facilities that accept Medicare and provide emergency care to provide "stabilizing" treatment to emergency conditions without regard to ability to pay. Once you are stable, it is perfectly legal to toss you out the door. Your friend likely found a facility that was willing to cover her cancer under their charitable care program (some level of unpaid care is required in most states for non-profit hospitals.) If your friend had needed a transplant, she would have discovered the limits of that care. (People routinely die due to inability to get transplants covered; they are just too expensive for most hospitals to write off.) Dialysis is ALWAYS covered by Medicare as soon as four months elapse, no matter your age. But you need to find somebody to cover those four months, unless you want to head to the ER every time you crash. This is by no means guaranteed. You most certainly can be refused "essential" care, as long as you are not in danger of dying right there in the lobby. (As in, they'll treat you if you are about to fall into a diabetic coma, but aren't at all required to provide you with a monitor and strips (much less insulin) long-term to keep it from happening again.)
Next, there is no law saying that hospitals (or anybody) cannot collect on debt as long as you are making minimal payments. They can pursue debt collection equal to the efforts of any other unsecured creditor. And yes, if you show up and offer up what you can, the judge may take you up on your payment plan... but that's not set in stone and varies widely by state.
And yes, being out of work drives people to bankruptcy, but so do unaffordable co-pays and deductibles, policies with horrible annual limits, policies with limited coverage, unaffordable drugs, sudden catastrophe without insurance (it doesn't take much), etc. The paths to medical bankruptcy are many.
If you have a "serious" pre-existing condition (and the criteria for what that means is VERY broad), absent Obamacare, it's VERY difficult (and in many cases impossible) to obtain insurance. And what insurance is available is often utterly unaffordable and or horrible. (Any pre-existing condition you have will usually be outright excluded, along with childbirth.)
With Obamacare, those in excellent health will indeed pay more for coverage, but those in anything less than excellent health will now be able to obtain usable insurance outside of an employer group plan.
My son needed a surgery the cost 15K.
You could have gotten insurance that would cover precisely that sort of bill for a lot less than $1500/month.
The problem is that you don't even know that such plans exist: These days they are called "Catastrophic Coverage" but they used to be called "Major Medical" -- typically you will pay the first $1000 or so of any illness out of pocket, and the rest is on the insurance company.
The people with these plans often create Health Savings Accounts for dealing with routine healthcare costs.. and these have serious tax advantages.
But no.. people are too ignorant to know whats available, so they demand PelosiCare, so that some fuckers in an insurance company can get a percentage of the cost of every single doctors visit... Its people like you that ruined this country. You wanted something that was already available, and voted to get the government to provide it for you at 10 times the price.
"His name was James Damore."
The level of the taxes is not really important. What is at stake is what you get for the taxes. If taxes pay for education and healthcare, businesses get educated and healthy workers. If it pays a war in Iraq, it just benefits businesses linked to defense (well.. I should say war instead of defense).
Obamacare slightly reduces the cost of insurance for older people (like me) but then materially increases the cost for young males and in other ways in practice. Ever look at the demographics of a tech startup beyond a founder? At my startup, we pay for good insurance for our employees and while maybe my individual insurance is slightly cheaper, that is apparently buried in the noise floor of the increasing costs for the total employee pool. And the small difference in individual cost for older individuals does not materially alter the risk calculus for the individual in terms of whether they'll start a tech company.
It would be nice to see a little honesty that the law as written will be terrible for a lot of people. Including, empirically, tech startups. The percentage increases per employee are not small at all going forward and I know a lot of tech startups that are trying figure out if and how they can bury those new costs. I'm sure there are many policies that would reduce the direct costs for startups but this wasn't it, and predictably so. Perhaps media spin artists can contrive politically palatable scenarios where it reduces some startup's cost slightly while out here in the real world there has been a substantial increase in the cost of providing health insurance at tech startups.
Consequently, the idea that this reality will fuel a tech startup boom is some pretty strained reasoning. It may have some benefits but this won't be one of them. Obamacare might have helped some people but tech startups do not seem to be among them.
Nevada is a poor example. Their taxes are low because the tourism industry heavily subsidizes the entire state budget. Tax collection is quite high, but it's not coming out of the pockets of the residents of the state. Sales tax and vehicle registration taxes are also quite high. As far as unemployment, Nevada (especially Las Vegas), has a very uneducated, unhealthy, and transient population. Many people moved there during the construction boom, and the economy of the state is not diverse enough to accommodate the bust.
Scott
The theory is: We already subsidize health care for everyone. Get sick and collapse on the sidewalk? They take you to the hospital. If you have money or insurance, you pay. If you are a homeless person with nothing, the hospital eats the cost. Well, they actually spread the expense across all the paying customers.
Wandering in (or being carried into) an ER is an extremely inefficient way to handle most medical issues. It would be more efficient to get people into a clinic for some treatment before they become an emergency. So Obamacare is aimed at getting the above subsidy to the people at a point that would buy them better and cheaper care.
Now, the reality is that every special interest has gotten their fingers in the legislation. So its probably rife with loopholes and opportunities for abuse. We will have to audit it carefully, plug the loopholes as they are discovered and throw some scam artists in prison to keep the program from bleeding money. It can be done, but only by people willing to work on it. Jumping up and down and whining will just play into the hands of the crooks.
Have gnu, will travel.
Reagan and Bush both proved that taxes are already too high. They both lowered taxes and the result was an increase in funding to the government.
Only in your imagination. The only time the deficit has gone down (in fact completely eliminated) was during the high tax years of Clinton. The economy did great and unemployment went to a record low.
Most people are healthy and only need to learn to stay healthy. Most are better off with a medical savings account than with medical insurance. Why give money away for someone else to make billions off of it while you get little more than weak promises that in the event something bad happens, you might get minimal care?
We live in such a debt financing society we've all completely forgotten how to save money for bad days. Does a credit card really substitute for a savings?
The cut back in coverage started around 2000. Obama was a Senator then for god's sake. The part time work started after the banks exploded from the mortgage bubble.
My HSA is still tax free. 1099s are mostly a tax dodge, taking advantage of desperate people or both. Companies hire 1099s for what's really full time continuous work and call them 'contractors'. The taxes are lower because you're not hiring an employee you're paying for work. The reason you can't get a 1099 is the gov't is cracking down on that. It's only good for you in the short run. In the long run they'll cut your wages and benefits while underfunding the safety net you'll need sooner or later.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Reagan and Bush both proved that taxes are already too high. They both lowered taxes and the result was an increase in funding to the government.
Only in your imagination.
No, the original comment was correct. Federal revenue did go up... but spending went up even more.
The only time the deficit has gone down (in fact completely eliminated) was during the high tax years of Clinton. The economy did great and unemployment went to a record low.
Don't forget that those were also the years when the GOP took over Congress and restrained spending, a little bit, for a little while.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All of you guys arguing about a system that makes healthcare available to those who don't have it - assume the vulnerable as it seems they are most likely to benefit - sounds like base savagery. I can't begin to imagine that you think the free market is a better fit for such a basic human requirement.