1. Coverage is more expensive for lesser benefits.
2. Year-over-year changes to costs and benefits are less predictable.
2b. Continuity of coverage may itself be at risk with pre-existing conditions returning to the political debate.
If you have basic, predictable medical costs — and believe that you will stay in that bucket — these concerns may not be very relevant to you.
But a lot of people don’t fall in that bucket or aren’t confident that they’ll stay there. For these people, this adds a big risk to venturing out as an entrepreneur or freelancer.
A wholly privatized, largely deregulated health care market is toxic to entrepreneurialism because of these risks.
> A wholly privatized, largely deregulated health care market is toxic to entrepreneurialism because of these risks.
Except that the American health insurance market is both regulated in the extreme and, in the case of the extremely poor and the elderly, heavily subsidized by taxpayers as Medicaid/Medicare. I really don't know what the effects of a private, deregulated health insurance market would be because we're so far from that.
I think there may be good arguments for either free market health care or nationalized health care. But whatever this thing that we've got is, it should be burned to the ground.
> 2b. Continuity of coverage may itself be at risk with pre-existing conditions returning to the political debate.
This reminds me, when I was in college I had a pretty bad accident, but I had some college provided health care plan my parents paid for that covered it.
Even after being employed and having employer health care, I kept renewing it incase I had a longer term issue related to the accident that my new insurance wouldn't cover due to it being pre-existing.
In particular, I had to get a rod inserted into my leg, and thought if I had a problem with it down the line, it might get denied by my new insurer.
2. Year-over-year changes to costs and benefits are less predictable.
2b. Continuity of coverage may itself be at risk with pre-existing conditions returning to the political debate.
If you have basic, predictable medical costs — and believe that you will stay in that bucket — these concerns may not be very relevant to you.
But a lot of people don’t fall in that bucket or aren’t confident that they’ll stay there. For these people, this adds a big risk to venturing out as an entrepreneur or freelancer.
A wholly privatized, largely deregulated health care market is toxic to entrepreneurialism because of these risks.