Going Solo - A Side Benefit of Health Care Reform

From Scripps Howard:

You've wanted to write a book or start a company or open a restaurant, but you've always been afraid of quitting your job and losing your health coverage. So would you be more likely to take an entrepreneurial leap if you knew you and your family's health expenses were covered, no matter what?

It's not a new question, but it's one that's being asked with more frequency now that health-care reform is again on the agenda in Washington. And while research on the topic has been limited, some studies suggest the patchwork system of employee-paid health care is discouraging entrepreneurship.

That's because of what's known as "job lock," a bit of economics jargon that's been in vogue since the 1990s, the last time Congress and the president staged a real health-reform debate. Basically, "job lock" means that you're more likely to stay in your current job, which offers health insurance, than take a chance on a startup business, where health expenses would come out of your pocket. So people are "locked" into jobs that they no longer enjoy, where they are economically unproductive, or so the theory goes.

This article goes on to say that some people dispute the reality of job lock, that insurance benefits through COBRA plans make it possible for workers to shake the dust of jobs they hate from their feet and get into work they love.

We live in the real world, you and I. We know that COBRA is ungodly expensive and no one but the exceptionally brave or exceedingly desperate would opt to bail out of a decent paying job into an uncertain future with only COBRA as an insurance plan.
Truth be told, if you're that brave or desperate, you'll probably decide to jump without the parachute because the cost of COBRA would eat up what little nest egg you've saved.

But how exciting if we didn't have to work just to be covered by insurance! What if we could write that book, compose that symphony, start that diner or join the Peace Corps for a year? Many, many people would stay in their jobs. They're not there for the benefits, they're there for the pay, the security and the relationship they've built with their employer and coworkers. But some of us, oh, some of us have dreams that we quietly pursue in the few free hours we have each night. And some of us have risked it all and tried to make ends meet with art - insurance is a wild, impossible dream for many artists. And some of us want to start our own companies.

Let me give it back to the newspaper article:


"The type of universal health insurance coverage policy proposed by President Obama will clearly promote the freedom of workers to leave their jobs to start new companies," writes Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "By solving a major impediment to mobility in the U.S. labor market, a larger government goes hand in hand with more business development."


In other words, universal health coverage also ensures creativity.

And now I will turn it over to Robert Reich, who makes the whole issue pretty darned simple.

Doing Good is Good For Business

"I gave at the office" just isn't good enough now. President Obama and the First Lady are hammering home the message that we have to recommit to service - going out of our way to help each other.
And business is finding that if it doesn't act like a good neighbor, it hurts the bottom line.
Cheryl Heller owns Heller Communications Designs - she says the companies that take social innovation and responsibility seriously are operating at an entirely different level of success than the dinosaurs that just don't get it. One of the winners? Proctor and Gamble. Really. That's what she said.
Dan Jacobs started Everywun.org knowing that if he could demonstrate that doing good is good for business, he'd get corporate cooperation. It's working.
And today I spoke with Liz Neumark...she owns Great Performances in NYC - a catering service and series of cafes in some of the city's most exclusive places. She employs people in the arts - they're smart, they're engaging and man do they need work. Plus she bought a farm in NY's Hudson Valley. She raises enough vegetables to not only supply her business needs, but she donates food to the hungry.
That's business you can feel good about.



http://tinyurl.com/c9345l

Making Lemonade

I recently met Dan Jacobs, the young entrepreneur who started Everywun. Everywun operates on the conviction that doing good is good business. Everywun enlists businesses willing to donate a certain amount of money to a worthy cause, then ties them with a web 'badge' that anyone can put on a website or blog. For every hit on that page, the business makes a donation. And what the business gets out of it is consumer recognition, goodwill and more business. Jacobs says he has studies that prove a customer is more likely to buy from a company it sees as socially responsible. He's a social entrepreneur. He's part of a growing group.

Ode Magazine, my favorite magazine on the planet at the moment, recently did a long feature on social entrepreneurs. They're not starry eyed idealists, though they're certainly idealists.

They're taking advantage of the increasing sense that we're all in this together - as each of us feels the pinch from the economy in lesser or greater degrees, we also are aware that everyone else is feeling it, too. We can curl up in a corner and cry, we can pull the covers over our heads and wait for it to be over, or we can help. That last one seems to feel the best, doesn't it?

http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/61/social-entrepreneurs-mainstream/