Health Insurance and Entreprenuership

Health Insurance and Entreprenuership July 26, 2017

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I don’t have much time today (because I’m busy being entrepreneurial) for anything other than a quick thought provoked by the current health-insurance debates raging. (Do debates ever do anything but rage?  Sorry. I promise to not turn this into a linguistics blog.)

I had reasons to say both of these things in conversation on social media today:

“Philosophically, I’m a Distributist: keep everything as small and local as possible. (The political philosophy of G. K. Chesterton.) Medically, I’m an asthmatic. Economically, I’m an independent contractor with no employment-provided insurance. Those three things are always in tension. I would die without my asthma drugs. I wish we could find a way to not make it cost an arm and a leg for me, and for you, not to die.”

“I make a good income, and add value to the world and the economy by the things I create, but all of it is as an independent contractor with no benefits. I watch the news daily with some trepidation. Entrepreneurship is throttled, I’d maintain, when entrepreneurs can’t depend on the same safety nets as people in more traditional positions.”

The faith and work space is full of people who encourage entrepreneurs. (Someday I’m going to write that post about how we also need to value people who preserve old things. But not today…..) I think one reason health care for entrepreneurs is not discussed more is because most entrepreneurs seem to be young: or at least not yet 40, not yet at the stage of life when awareness of your own physicality begins to dog your every step.

I don’t know the best way out of this mess, but I know we need to find one. Actually, I think Mary Pezzulo said it best at Steel Magnificat:

“Our current system is broken in a thousand ways. The Affordable Care Act is stupid in a thousand ways. We could do much better, and many countries do. I’m for any reform that’s actually an improvement. But if your plan involves knowingly endangering lives as a means to an end, then it’s not pro-life, it’s not Christian, and it’s a sin.”


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