Rebecca Shafer hosted the most recent Cavalcade of Risk (the 185th edition – that is one very long-running blog carnival! Kudos to Hank for keeping it going all these years); be sure to check it out. I particularly liked David Williams’ post about Obamacare and Entrepreneurship. I think David hits a lot of nails square on the head with that post. Removing the pre-existing condition barrier to entry in the individual health insurance market is a 
good way to make people more likely to take the leap into self-employment instead of feeling tied to their guaranteed-issue group health insurance policy. There’s definitely room to debate the issue on an individual basis. Some people, especially younger, healthy people who have always qualified for underwritten health insurance and who earn enough money to be above the subsidy cutoff (about $46,000 for an individual and $94,000 for a family of four), might find themselves financially worse off under Obamacare (although they will likely have better quality health insurance going forward, which could improve their financial situation if they ever needed to use it). But from the perspective of benefiting as many people as possible, the new rules regarding individual health insurance are good ones. Most young people (the population hardest hit by rate hikes related to making individual policies guaranteed issue) will qualify for subsidies to lower their out-of-pocket spending on premiums. And nobody will have to deal with the frustration of not being able to qualify for health insurance outside of an employer group plan. A few years ago, in states that didn’t have high risk pools available, people who couldn’t qualify for medically underwritten health insurance and didn’t have access to group coverage had no options at all. This was no doubt a barrier to entry for entrepreneurship and self-employment. Although removing that barrier will prove costly in terms of funding the subsidies (and on an individual basis for younger people who don’t qualify for subsidies), the increase in self-employment is likely to be an overall benefit for the country as a whole.
