McMeghan has a typically fact-free post containing a bunch of reasons why healthcare reform will not increase the number of small businesses. Because even she can recognize that an argument conjured from thin air, moonbeams, and the tears of Andrea Mitchell is a little weak, she later amended the post with this column by an economist who could actually use a statistical website. Here’s his “argument”:
The latest Small Business Economy an annual publication of The Office of Advocacy of the Small Business Administration explains that 60.7 million people have employer-sponsored health insurance from their employment (people covered by their spouses don’t matter here because they don’t face job lock). Therefore, 607,000 additional people per year would begin the entrepreneurial process if we eliminated health insurance job lock.
But not everyone who begins the process of starting a business manages to get one up and running. In fact, analysis of the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics data by Paul Reynolds shows that a new business results from about one-third of startup efforts. So we will get about 200,000 new businesses if we can eliminate the job lock that comes from employer-sponsored health insurance.
Again, not an economist, but isn’t it just possible that some businesses fail because of high healthcare costs or the uninsured illness of a founder? If I were an economist, wouldn’t I want to at least mention that possibility, and maybe allow that a few more businesses might succeed if healthcare weren’t such a burden? And why don’t spouses count as job locked? Lots of small businesses are family businesses, and maybe that spouse is stuck in her job instead of helping out the business, because her job is the only way for the family to get insurance.
(While I’m asking stupid rhetorical questions: Is there any profession whose practitioners debase themselves more often in the service of ideology than economics? )
If you’re interested in learning something about healthcare and small business, this mommy blogger is far more informative than either of the two aforementioned idiots. She started a family media company a couple of years ago. Because of some minor illnesses (such as hay fever), she had to get “high risk pool” insurance for her family. She’s a perfect example of a business owner more likely to succeed now that the bill is law. She also got a great teabagger flyer in her door, and her reaction shows just how alienating teabagging can be.
Bill E Pilgrim
Somewhat off topic but Atrios has a great comment on the latest Mustache of War column asking for “A tea party of the radical center”
Actually, speaking of incoherent, this isn’t misplaced as a comment to a post about McArgleBargle.
Felonious Wench
My father owned a small business that employed 12 people. he had a heart attack and needed surgery. Insurance company denied it due to a preexisting heart condition that had never been diagnosed. Parents had to pay for the procedure that saved his life.
Bankruptcy followed. Dad lost his business. 12 people lost their jobs.
So, fuck them.
Zifnab
Wouldn’t it be great if newspaper and tv economists spent more time running the numbers and less time drinking cocktails with their favorite Senators? Maybe then we wouldn’t see half the banking community pile on the CDO disaster and yahoos like Jim Crammer singing the praises of Bear Sterns without a care in the world, right up until judgement day.
Brian J
As I said yesterday, she spends more than half the post asking a bunch of questions and talking about Jon Gruber, the well known economist who made an argument about job lock last year in The Washington Monthly, yet she never gives any indication that she called Gruber. For someone like us, that’d be pointless, because our calls wouldn’t be answered. But she works for a major political publication and she was invited to the Treasury Department financial blogger meeting. For better or worse, she’s in, and yet she doesn’t take the most basic steps involved in looking into an issue.
Maybe I am wrong, and she will later reveal in a full length piece for the magazine that she has done something like that. But if not, she revealed herself to be incredibly lazy. That’s not surprising, but it’s still sad.
Jon H
Also, some of the new ‘businesses’ will be writers or musicians going full-time.
While not many of them will produce blockbusters, it only takes one J.K. Rowling or Twilight to produce a multi-billion-dollar industry. (Which is more than any number of glibertarian pundits have ever done.)
Socraticsilence
Wait, even if those businesses fail shouldn’t a libertarian like McMegan support their initial creation- I mean isn’t increasing economic opportunity kind of thier ethos?
Zifnab
Sorry. Had to throw that out there.
4tehlulz
>So we will get about 200,000 new businesses if we can eliminate the job lock that comes from employer-sponsored health insurance.
THIS IS BAD FOR SOME REASON, SO NOBAMACARE ALSO
joes527
So this “economist” bases *his* work on some research that he boils down to: 1% more of the workforce would start small businesses if they didn’t get their health insurance from their work.
But what the original paper said is much more interesting.
This seems to make a strong argument for single payer. WAY TO GO MCMEGHAN!!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
You’all leave Megan alooooooon!! None of yooz has a fraction of the awesome personal angst she wrestles with every day.
It’s not easy being thick as a brick.
clone12
One possible way to estimate that is to look at small-business survival rate in MA before and after RomneyCare. To what extent did small businesses have a higher success rate afterwards.
Violet
Spouses aren’t affected by job lock? Are you kidding me? Both spouses are affected by job lock if one of them is on the other’s insurance. That’s how it works.
I know several people who stay in jobs they don’t like just because of health care. They’d love to go off on their own and start their own business – and actually have some money saved up to get it off the ground – but they can’t afford to do it because their health insurance via their job is the only way their family can stay insured.
And sure there’s no guarantee a business will succeed, but there’s even more of a guarantee it won’t succeed if it doesn’t get started in the first place because the entrepreneur can’t afford to leave a full time job because of health insurance.
Honestly, these people don’t live in the real world. McMegan, especially. I don’t usually wish bad things on people, but I kind of wish she’d find out what it feels like to get a bad illness, not be able to work, get kicked off her health insurance as a result of losing her job, and then try to get treatment. Happened to a friend of our family. He died. I’m not wishing that on McMegan, but her lack of empathy for anyone other than well-connected, white, entitled people like herself is shocking.
cleek
But the extra taxes the rich will have to pay to cover this free universal heath care for everyone in the universe means that over 54,243,000 new businesses will be unable to start – next year alone !
Can’t you dumb libruls see how your unthinking communist agenda is ramming homosexual fag tyranny down the throats of real working Americans? If you had a real appreciation of what economic freedom really means, you’d understand that bankruptcy and unaffordable treatments are the invisible hand’s way of keeping itself free of parasitic underachievers!
joes527
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Great stuff.
beltane
You don’t understand. Sure, small businesses will be helped by the health care bill, but that is not the real issue. The small businesses that will be helped are not transformative ones. And everyone knows that transformative business employ and are owned by young, healthy, wealthy individuals who will never become ill.
If you people were on McMegan’s exalted plane of existence, this simple fact would be crystal clear to you.
Barry
“(While I’m asking stupid rhetorical questions: Is there any profession whose practitioners debase themselves more often in the service of ideology than economics? )”
Journalism, of course.
beltane
@Violet:Into each life a little rain must fall, and McArdle’s understanding of things would be improved by a nice, refreshing nor’easter.
Xenos
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Your wise men don’t know how it feels.
e.c.
i have a brother who would have loved nothing more than to start his own business. but he has a daughter who had a brain tumor as an infant and has needed a great deal of extra medical care her entire life. his carreer path has been dictated to a great extent by making sure his employer would provide adequate coverage for his family since there was no way they would ever be covered privately. to take the “what ifs” even further, he has turned down opportunities with smaller companies over coverage issues so small business are also hampered in their efforts to attract the best employees.
p.a.
I’ve had just enough economics to know I know little about it, and even I can tell McArdle is a dolt. My theory is that her and Maglalang continue to be employed in a backdoor effort to discredit the intellectual capacity of women.
gwangung
That’s a double “duh” statement if I ever heard one–you ought slap wingnuts upside the head with that every time they open their mouths.
mr. whipple
Wow, the linked blog explains our situation almost exactly. Small biz owners with pre-existing conditions that make insurance not available at any price or conditions that raise premiums so high it’s impossible to pay for. That’s why we supported this bill so strongly. It’s a godsend.
Even the tea party thing is similar. On Monday we got a call asking us to advertise in a tea party program for an upcoming rally. (The woman who called was calling small businesses.) It was a blast talking to this poor idiot, and I wish I could have recorded the call for posterity. I almost feel sorry for someone so stupid, but figured it’s driven by more than a touch of racism, so to hell with her.
DougJ
Is there any profession whose practitioners debase themselves more often in the service of ideology than economics?
Maybe law?
Ash Can
@Brian J: Maybe her call wasn’t answered either. Maybe Gruber figured he couldn’t justify making time to sit and educate an overgrown boarding-school princess.
cleek
@mr. whipple:
put me in that group.
my wife is stuck in a job she hates partially because i’m a lowly contractor with no benefits, and we’re both loaded with pre-existing conditions. we each have side businesses, but there’s no way either of us could turn them into full time jobs.
try getting coverage for a cancer survivor and a life-long asthmatic.
gwangung
And what’s with that “transformative” shit? You don’t need to hit a home run every time out; the nuts and bolts of prosperity is a lot of small businesses doing well, not hitting the jackpot. The millionaire next door hits lots of singles and gets on base all the time.
Obviously, McMeghan only digs the long ball….
Brian J
@Ash Can:
I don’t think so. The night that the bill was passed in congress, Gruber was on CNBC answering the loaded questions from the hosts. And to his credit, he answered them intelligently, not that I would have expected anything different, but still.
Walker
@Jon H:
George RR had a post on the issues of healthcare and writers just after the bill passed.
joes527
@DougJ:
And Dentistry!
mem from somerville
I’m a small business owner. When I was starting up years ago, I would go to all these local entrepreneurs’ meetings. Invariably the first question all these tech geeks who wanted to startup would ask me: what do you do for health insurance?
They did not ask me what we do about taxes, as those are a non-issue when you are not making any money yet.
But now, as I live in MA, this has become a non-issue. It is very nice.
Francis
yah, there’s precious little evidence that she actually works. back at the start of the banking crisis, she had a series of posts about the impossibility of passing ANY effective regulatory changes, and how she talked to a whole bunch of people and went to a whole bunch of meetings.
I tried to press her as to who she spoke to (like whether she called Paul Volkher, for example, or any banking lawyers who used to be at the Fed or in private practice). [As I am the son of a banking lawyer, this is a field I know something about.] She failed to answer, and when I got a little snippy she ended up deleting my comments.
mr. whipple
@cleek:
I hear ya. We were just winging it and hoping we’d make it to Medicare. In the 13 years I’ve been self-employed I’ve seen a Dr. 3 times, two of which were at a ‘free clinic’. (I paid them. I don’t want a free ride, just something affordable on our salaries.) It’s incredibly humilating to get health care this way, but most of the people that use it are just like us. This is America, whoopee!
When we applied and were denied, the agent encourged us to reapply and lie, which would have just meant we would pay premiums for years only to be rescinded if we ever filed a claim. The whole system is broken.
Redshift
One of the arguments for HCR I thought was way underused was family farms. I heard a story a few years ago about how it had become common for farm wives to go get a job at Wal-Mart or something so the family could have insurance, because they couldn’t afford individual coverage any more.
Since family farms are the unimpeachable salt of the earth in any political discussion, it seems like this was a real missed opportunity.
Persia
@Violet: Spouses aren’t affected by job lock? Are you kidding me? Both spouses are affected by job lock if one of them is on the other’s insurance. That’s how it works.
This exactly. And in this economy we probably won’t have a ton of people starting out on their own, but hell, it’ll be more than there would’ve been.
Paul W.
Doctors/health care workers debase themselves far more than economists, just look at the abundance of GOP practitioners that throw all their high brow learning in order to remind their constituents that any cuts to Medicare Advantage mean euthenizing granny.
Or look at folks unwilling to give the option of an abortion or prescribing the pill. Doctors are definitely worse.
Redshift
@Walker: Yeah, and his followup to the discussion that occurred was brilliant, too. Comparing countries with universal healthcare and our system, and how many people in each who posted comments would gladly switch if given the chance:
W
But what is a “small business”. It varies according to what government entity you ask. For HCR I would guess it’s 50 as those businesses with less than 50 are not required to comply with providing health care. 50 is not such a small business in reality and my guess is an owner of such a business would already have a health plan in place. Good benefits are needed to attract good workers. So I don’t see HCR affecting what I consider small businesses in the 1-10 employee range.
Amanda in the South Bay
To be fair to them, its not as if McMegan is an actual economist either.
Joshua
Hmm, am I nuts or is 200,000 additional small businesses pretty good? Remove it from the HCR, imagine there is some policy which economists will say could create 200,000+ small businesses, it has to be politicial suicide to not support that, right?
My girlfriend works for a pharm company. You have no idea.
Erik Vanderhoff
I can unequivocally say that this is why I can only help my wife’s business on the periphery. Her business brings in way more money, but I bring in the health insurance.
geg6
There’s some idiot on that mommy blog trying to claim that the HCR bill mandates that we all have to pay $300 more a month in taxes.
Gawd. The stupid, it burns!
jibeaux
Not strictly on topic, but heard on the radio this morning that nearly 1 million Californians per year seek medical treatment in Mexico. (but a Canadian premier went to Florida, I know) Do you think we might have greater productivity and possibly better long-term results if we weren’t taking time off to go to developing nations for our health care?
Brian J
@Francis:
In other words, her response was “Shut up, that’s how/why!”? Seems appropriate for her.
Joshua
What @4tehlulz said. Even if the economist’s assumptions are correct, that’s still 200,000 new businesses. That ain’t nothin’, friends.
Lisa
I have always wondered why this wasn’t discussed more. Amanda Marcotte addressed it a couple of times. Americans are so wedded to the idea that being fucking miserable and trapped at your job is part of the American experience. So the idea of being able to choose to work for that little law firm that dedicates itself to advocating for the poor instead of working for Douchebag and Douchebag, LLP because you need the benefits is a foreign (unAmerican) concept. Why should you be entitled to be happy with your employment options?! Soshulist fucker!
MBunge
I think it’s important to keep in mind that McArdle isn’t stupid. Jonah Goldberg is stupid. McArdle’s problem is that she’s even less emotionally mature than Goldberg (which is saying something). If anyone from this blog had to sit down and take a quiz on economic facts and theories with McArdle, she’d probably smoke all our asses. All the knowledge in the world is useless, though, if you insist it has to conform to your Randian hallucinations about the way the world must be.
Mike
joes527
@Redshift:
Dude. That’s what farm subsidies are for. Farmers don’t need government interfering in that.
Kairol Rosenthal
Not a political blogger, but I have a brain.
It’s Kairol here (I’m the young adult cancer patient who made everyone cry on Monday.) I don’t know gobs about politics or policy, but I’m a smart cookie and decided to figure some things out. There are a ton of cancer patients, and other people with chronic diseases, who are so confused about what this bill really means for us and how it will impact our care in the next 12 months.
I have made a quick and easy to understand guide called how Will The Healthcare Reform Bill Impact Cancer Patients? Please feel free to check it out. If you have additions you would like to make to the guide you can leave them as comments just after the post. I’d appreciate any input.
Thanks,
Kairol Rosenthal
geg6
@MBunge:
Ummm, no. She would not. I would happily take that challenge. In a second.
wenchacha
It stands to reason that some of the smartest and savviest would-be entrepreneurs look at the numbers and drop all dreams of their own small business, especially if they will have to deal with expensive pre-existing conditions. They might be champing at the bit to leave a dull job; maybe they have a great idea that just needs a chance to get off the ground. When they do the math, they see it is a non-starter. Maybe that will change now.
A former co-worker of mine was battling lymphoma, successfully, so far. Her husband would have loved to leave his boring job to work elsewhere, or start his own landscaping business. His company’s insurance covers her treatments: injections that can run 10 grand per. How do you ever hope to manage that without affordable insurance?
Lymphoma is often now a treatable chronic condition. You can live and be productive for a very long time. You shouldn’t have to be a wage slave just because you or a family member have a serious illness. You also shouldn’t have to die young just because proven treatment is prohibitively expensive.
But I don’t figure anybody will be giving me a column any time soon.
Ailuridae
Let me be very clear and somewhat snotty about something: Megan McArdle is not an economist. More over she holds no degree in economics. She has an MBA from the business school at my alma mater and here is the economics page:
http://www.chicagobooth.edu/fulltime/academics/curriculum/concentrations/economics.aspx
Basically its a fluffy program and since its a business school where a huge portion of students are being paid for (and let in because of connections with) by huge I-Banks and the like there is simply no rigor. There were several courses that undergrads who wanted to major in Econ would have trouble with (Econometrics, Statistics, etc) and for anyone that did there was a very simple answer: take the class at GSB (its now called Booth) with the fucking mouth-breathers. You were guaranteed an A.
Megan is painfully fucking dim and as she gets older she goes from being a consistent libertarian (which, again is an ideology for barely adolescent boys) to little more than a Republican shill who thinks beating homosexuals is problematic.
Brian J
@MBunge:
Considering most people here don’t have MBAs, that isn’t saying much. (Then again, who knows? The basic stuff isn’t that hard.)
The problem, as you identify, is that she’s looking to confirm her worldview more than anything else. That’s why she was accused of a “selective” reading of the evidence on health insurance saving lives by an actual health economist, Austin Frakt. That’s a pretty serious academic slam, by the way.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Kairol Rosenthal:
I am so like stealing this :-)
And thanks for you comment and links.
geg6
@Ailuridae:
Exactly. The idea that the Atlantic has her writing as an “expert” in economics is outrageous. I have a better background to write about economics than she does. And FSM knows, I have about 75 IQ points more than she does. Megan McArdle makes the rock in the rock garden outside my office window look like Albert Einstein.
Ailuridae
@MBunge:
Umm, you have no idea what you are talking about. Megan’s knowledge of economics is no different than anyone’s who took a decent macro or micro class as an undergrad. There is a reason she never, ever addresses data. Its because she simply can’t.
http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/pdf_10/MATH.pdf
That’s a link to my undergraduate program. I did applied math as well as math with a specialization in economics.
And of the people who post here regularly I would suggest that I am probably not top three in people who understand economic issues (especially about macro)
Bonnie L. McLellan
Add me to the list of the job-locked. My now 19 year old son was born with a congenital anomaly requiring repeated surgeries. In effect, he was born uninsurable, and I have kept the same job for 19 years to keep him covered. This change can’t happen fast enough for me- I can finally move on with my own life.
Robin G
I’m surprised — this is the first political blog I’ve seen that’s linked to Heather Armstrong’s post on this. I don’t always like her stuff, but on health care she’s been excellent, and her story is pretty much the epitome of why we needed this bill.
And yes, a decent number of her comments come from morons. The perils of blogging from Utah.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@MBunge: Megan is smart enough to create lots of cool sounding dots, but few them are remotely connectible.
media browski
So they found a conservative economist who’s basically willing to argue that it’s not worth it to even try to stimulate small business growth because 2/3 fail. The GOP is so interested in eating its own that it’s even eating its own theoretical foundations.
Xenos
Megan must be a genius. No matter what subject is at hand, she comes up with such completely original arguments and insights that cleverly run so contrary to what the rest of us laymen might be thinking. I don’t know how she does it.
/Atlantic subscriber.
Sheesh, even Sullivan is on to her now.
mistersnrub
McMegans epic hissy fit since this thing has passed has truly been glorious to behold. I love the taste of tears of unfathomable sadness!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Sorry mistermix, now I get around to reading the title you wrote, but still am stealing it. :)
morzer
Well, journalists and lawyers do come racing into my mind.
.
Of course, McArdle isn’t really a journalist, isn’t really an economist… what category does McArdle fit into?
Violet
@morzer:
Whiner who gets paid to whine. There are a lot of those types out there.
Xenos
@morzer:
What ever category it is, Tucker Carlson is in there with her.
djork
Add me to the list of those stuck in jobs for the healthcare. Once this thing kicks in, I fully plan on figuring out a way to make / compose music for a living. I could care less about getting rich. I just want to make enough for my (future) family to survive, buy something nice every once in awhile, and pay for healthcare. I suspect there are many other artsy, creative types like me out there.
Sentient Puddle
Y’know, what she’s missing is that entrepreneurship isn’t the only thing thing that gets the shaft in job lock. People wanting to switch jobs because their current one sucks are also affected by job lock…
Sly
@morzer:
Professional Libertarian. It’s an occupation unto itself.
NobodySpecial
Well, you’re at least two up on her to start – you HAVE a brain, and working to boot.
morzer
@Sly:
Hmmm professional libertarian, eh? Sounds a bit like Enhanced Interrogation Artist. I was going to propose a new category for McArdle and those like her – the Gliberati i.e. people who fundamentally know nothing, but believe that they are entitled to go on about any topic at great length, with an air of immense self-satisfaction, and with utter disregard for the consequences to others, especially the poor or minorities.
.
Presumably McArdle would be a Gliberata, while Tucker Carlson would be a Gliberatus.
dww44
Perused all these comments to see if there was a link to “Andrea Mitchell’s tears”. Don’t believe there was one and I was looking for more proof to reinforce my belief that she carries water for Republicans and Conservatives ALL THE TIME. Plus, actually, I don’t think she’s a very good journalist..
morzer
@dww44:
Well, she’s no Sally Quinn, that’s for sure.
Egilsson
I am a single dad, and I primarily stay where I am because of health care coverage concerns for my daughter. She had cancer when she was 3, and has had constant medical expenses since then.
It’s like this bill was written with her in mind – other than a single payer option (which I would prefer).
I stopped reading McArdle some time ago because I thought her columns were shallow and silly.
morzer
@Egilsson:
Egilsson, best wishes to you and your daughter. It must have been a terrible experience to get cancer so young. Can we ask how old she is now?
willstheway
And what of the businesses that never get started because of the lack of affordable health care? While much of the discussion on this topic has focused on “transformative” businesses, which I assume are venture-capital-funded, high-tech startups that will eventually grow into corporations, I think we need to think about the one- or two-person business start-ups that never get started because of a lack of health care. As a former college professor, I’ve had scores of students coming to my office with quite viable business ideas. But I’ve had to tell them that unless they had spouses with company-provided health insurance that would insure them while they were getting off the ground, they just as well forget plans that might grow into employing scores or hundreds of people, and go back to the 9-5.
Silver Owl
Once you have kids, get older or get sick there is a tendency to get locked into a job just for health care coverage.
One of the reasons I would like to see single payer is because it would give the working people more freedom in choosing their jobs and/or remaining. Which to me translates into a more negotiable position for wages and a more equitable and respectable business relationship with the company.
When people have an equitable and respectable relationship with their company, they tend to have high praise for it. Which, word of mouth is still one the best market tools around.
Evil Parallel Universe
But why would you want to increase the number of people starting business – that’s the question for McMegan (and others).
As it turns out, just yesterday I guest lectured at a university on the topic: “Introduction to Entrepreneurship.” And before getting to the basics of “how to start a business the ‘right way’,” I discussed the many myths regarding “Entrepreneurship” as a good, for both society as a whole and individuals who DARE. DAMMIT! to become entrepreneurs. Myths that are certainly promoted and perpetuated in the MSM (particularly “Heroic Entrepreneurship” like Google and Apple and other huge successes), and myths that certainly feed into small “l’ libertarian unicorntopian ideas where we all work for ourselves and are successful at it free of unions and regulations.
Entrepreneurship isn’t a benefit to society or individuals in nearly all cases.And most of the data I used to show that is found in Yale University Prof. Scott Shane’s book The Illusions of Entrepreneurship (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008).
In the book, Prof. Shane uses empirical data to show that entrepreneurship is NOT the societal good it is portrayed to be; that popular beliefs about entrepreneurship – at both the societal and individual levels – are NOT supported by the “data.”
At the societal level, entrepreneurship:
1. Does NOT create economic growth; and,
2. Does NOT create jobs.
Something like 43 start-ups created in Year 1 will create 9 jobs in Year 10.
Most people start a business of their own (at which the vast majority will fail, and at which they will lose money), for the simple fact they don’t like working for other people (which is, I guess, small “l” libertarianism in some way). The majority of people who start businesses do not do so with the primary aim of making a profit – or with really any plan at all.
And, even for those who do succeed, the vast majority of those will make significantly less money than if they worked for others. Your living standards will go down! BOOYAH!
So, rather than whether HCR fosters entrepreneurship or not, the question to ask first is why should the society foster entrepreneurship when it really doesn’t do much for us, other than to make alleged libertarians happy? McMegan should quit her day job, go it alone like a true libertarian would, without the support of a paycheck or benefits. Then she could write about entrepreneurship.
(I’ve nothing against entrepreneurship. I’ve been an “entrepreneur” for the past 15 years, 1 big success, some smaller ones, some failures. I’ve actually lived it. But it is very difficult to succeed, and you do give up benefits by making that choice (though I’ve always had healthcare), the lack of it is not something that would have stopped me. And the odds are very much in favor of failing).
As for healthcare specifically, Shane sites “D. Bernstein, “Fringe Benefits and Small Business: Evidence From the Federal Reserve Board Small Business Survey,” Applied Economics 34 (2002): 2063-2067″ for the proposition that: “Jobs in new firms offer fewer benefits than jobs in existing firms. Studies show that older businesses are more likely to offer a pension plan or health insurance coverage to their employees. (Illusions of Entrepreneurship, page 156.)
There is nothing in the book that specifically discusses whether “lack of healthcare” is an impediment to starting a business. Though in the same context, other exigencies – like a mortgage, kids, etc. – would also have to be factored in as to “locks” that prevent them from starting businesses.
Given the basic factors as to why people start companies, what I take out of Shane’s book is that lack of healthcare probably isn’t that big a factor in whether someone leaps to start their own business. (Many people start their own business not as a full-time proposition, but while keeping their day job, where presumably they are in an insurance plan).
As for the quote from the paper about seeing an increase in 65 year olds starting companies, I haven’t read the paper, but there certainly could be other reasons, like Social Security or other pension benefits kicking in and thus additional financial resources being available – or the simple fact that someone who is 65 has had more time to save more money. Just some thoughts. Also, 65 is a common retirement age – so some people may plan for “second careers” at that time. But again, the vast majority of entrepreneurs are age 45-54.
ThatPirateGuy
Hell, once I decide whether to have children or not this new law will enable me to start a small retail gaming store. I’d be happy with half the salary I have now if I could get it selling/teaching games.
nodakfarmboy
@Redshift: It does happen.
My mom, a homemaker for many years, had to get a job “in town” in the late 90’s- not because we needed the money, but for the health benefits. The premiums in the individual market were onerous, and farm income wasn’t keeping up, so she found a job working for one of the local school districts. My mother, bless her, worked (and still does) full time for very little take home pay, so that we could have better health care.
crack
Dooce has admitted to serious bouts with depression. That would qualify a person for a high risk pool. She is however a treasure and I’m glad this law (no longer just a bill:) will help her and her family.
Jennifer
Since I’m not allowed to post comments over at McMegan’s (at least, they never show up), I’ll post my response to her dumbassed column here:
BTW kids, I have my own joint and you’re welcome to drop by any time. This week features a celebration of rightwing butthurt.
Egilsson
Morzer, she’s 14 now.
Cancer free now, but the side effects of the treatment (surgeries, gallons of chemo, radiation, stem cell transplant) are a bitch.
sophronia
I’m another parent who is thrilled that my son, age 6, will not face an entire lifetime of being uninsurable thanks to a non-life-threatening pre-existing condition. My husband has excellent insurance through his employer now, but should that ever change, we would be in deep trouble. I may not need the provisions of this bill right now, but my kid will need them in the future, and I’m sure he’s not the only one.
And I have been getting Facebook messages from my cousin who works for the Heritage Foundation that have made me want to tear out my hair. The sad thing is, he’s a wonderful guy and everyone in the family loves him. How he can hold the insane political beliefs he does is beyond me.
asiangrrlMN
@Egilsson: I’m glad she’s better now, but man. That’s some hard stuff with which to deal for the both of you.
Yeah. I don’t understand how people can hear of stories like that or even BE a story like that and be against universal healthcare.
gwangung
Remind him that Obamacare is essentially the same plan put out by the Heritage Foundation 17 years ago.
miwome
Before economists and journalists, it was historians and artists.