I wish I could say things as neatly as others, or have time to put together the threads of argument, but I'd like to share with you a reminder; that employer-based health insurance is a barrier to entrepreneurship.
This morning I came across some very good work on connecting the dots between health care and enterpreneurship that I'd like to share with you.
I'd recommend reading this, from John Schmitt's blog, that lays out all the diverse threads demonstrating a relationship between universal healthcare and small-business employment.
Put simply by David Leonhardt in the New York Times:
Guaranteeing people a decent retirement and decent health care does more than smooth out the rough edges of capitalism. Those guarantees give people the freedom to take risks. If you know that professional failure won’t leave you penniless and won’t prevent your child from receiving needed medical care, you can leave the comfort of a large corporation and take a chance on your own idea. You can take a shot at becoming the next great American entrepreneur.
Take a look at all of the citations:
In the latter, the conclusion is:
Their estimates provide some evidence that "entrepreneurship lock" exists, which raises concerns that the bundling of health insurance and employment may create an inefficient level of business creation.
The sad conclusion that I come to from all of this is the single thing in the past year that Obama and our Congress could have done to put us on a road to economic recovery is to have enacted, with rapid deployment, universal health care coverage paid for by progressive taxation.
A nation with citizens secure in their finances and health care will be a productive nation.