<story><title>Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk</title><url>http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/jon-stewart-proposes-an-entrepreneurial-policy-dont-laugh/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jcromartie</author><text>Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is. But, as far as I can tell, health insurance really is the biggest factor keeping people from starting new companies.&lt;p&gt;For myself and my peers, with new families and houses and student debt, etc., it&apos;s the &lt;i&gt;one thing&lt;/i&gt; that scares us more than anything else. The prospect of a business going under is nowhere near as terrifying of getting caught off guard without health insurance. It&apos;s positively paralyzing, knowing that it is something that could be essentially impossible to recover from, unlike simply writing off a failed venture. Hopefully the Affordable Care Act will mitigate some of that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>suresk</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Could this be because countries with broader safety nets also have more regulation and make it hard to fire people?&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve always kind of thought a combination of making it easy to hire people and let them go, along with strong safety nets (ie, good unemployment insurance and not having health care tied to employment) would be optimal.</text></comment>
<story><title>Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk</title><url>http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/jon-stewart-proposes-an-entrepreneurial-policy-dont-laugh/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jcromartie</author><text>Countries with much broader safety nets for entrepreneurs are not producing the risky innovative companies that America is. But, as far as I can tell, health insurance really is the biggest factor keeping people from starting new companies.&lt;p&gt;For myself and my peers, with new families and houses and student debt, etc., it&apos;s the &lt;i&gt;one thing&lt;/i&gt; that scares us more than anything else. The prospect of a business going under is nowhere near as terrifying of getting caught off guard without health insurance. It&apos;s positively paralyzing, knowing that it is something that could be essentially impossible to recover from, unlike simply writing off a failed venture. Hopefully the Affordable Care Act will mitigate some of that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jandrewrogers</author><text>I can confirm that offering good health insurance is an important part of compensation when hiring, particularly for older candidates. At my startup, a generous health benefit was implemented early on in an effort to attract more senior employees. Often people in their 20s find it less valuable.&lt;p&gt;Health insurance tied to employment is a bad idea generally but that is the state of USian reality and so we make the best of that. Employer-based health insurance was a side effect of government regulation during the second World War that lingered long after the regulation has disappeared.&lt;p&gt;As a practical matter, the ACA is unlikely to help. The net effect is that it seems to be increasing overall costs per employee to maintain the status quo, and there are costs down the road that have not even been implemented yet. A company like mine can hide the cost but I can see why it would be problematic for businesses that are sensitive to total employee costs. As long as businesses are paying for health insurance, the math of the ACA is pretty grim; all it did was move the costs around and add some new ones. It is disappointing that it sort of ended up being the worst of both worlds.</text></comment>