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Is health reform unleashing an entrepreneurial wave?

Mitchell Hartman Apr 22, 2011
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Is health reform unleashing an entrepreneurial wave?

Mitchell Hartman Apr 22, 2011
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Tess Vigeland: Under the Obama health care reform plan, it’s supposed to get easier to find affordable insurance if you leave a job to try your hand at being an entrepreneur. That’s the theory, anyway.

We sent Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman from the Entrepreneurship Desk at Oregon Public Broadcasting to find out if health care reform is unleashing a small business wave.


Mitchell Hartman: I figured I’d start looking for a “health care effect” right at the beginning of the entrepreneurial pipeline.

Jamie Kerr: My name is Jamie Kerr and I’m the founder of Rain Town Footwear. We design sophisticated urban rain boots made from recycled tires.

Students at the University of Portland’s Center for Entrepreneurship are putting their business plans on the line in the annual elevator-pitch competition.

Kerr: Today I ask for $90,000 to move Rain Town forward.

Many of these students say they’re ready to launch right after college. One thing helping them along: under the new health care law, they can stay on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26.

Kerr: When I graduate, I don’t think my company will pay benefits because they’re a startup. So I probably wouldn’t worry about health insurance until I was 26.

Sam Wegman: The insurance is a little bit cushy right now. So I plan on riding that out as long as I possibly can.

That’s 21-year-old Sam Wegman, who’s pitching… well here, I’ll let him tell you.

Wegman: Hello my name is Sam, and I’m here to pitch a plan where I take my tunes to Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.

It’s something about “digital distribution strategy for singer-songwriters” — like himself.

Wegman: So to implement this plan, I’m looking for 12 grand.

He didn’t win, by the way — first prize went to a DIY cupcake bakery, as in “decorate it yourself.” There are other health care changes coming that’ll benefit the self-employed and people who want to jump jobs. Starting in 2014, state insurance exchanges will let individuals and small businesses join together to shop for coverage. And insurance companies won’t be able to deny coverage or set sky-high rates based on age or preexisting conditions.

Paul Fronstin: The insurance market reforms and the health insurance exchanges, in some ways, will allow you to de-link health benefits from your job.

Economist Paul Fronstin at the Employee Benefit Research Institute says the goal is to give everyone access to the kinds of plans big employers offer. And then let people keep their coverage.

Fronstin: And that will give people an opportunity to take risks as far as opening up a business, without having this fear about being denied health insurance coverage.

That fear leaves many mid-career professionals shackled to jobs they’d like to leave. Business consultant Gene Marks says insurance reform could give these people — with a Rolodex full of contacts, and a cupboard full of cholesterol and blood-pressure medications — a sort-of “get-out-of-my-9-to-5-job-free” card.

Gene Marks says it can help companies looking for new blood, too.

Gene Marks: Sometimes there are people you’d like to hire or you’d like to work with, but you can’t because they have a preexisting condition. They can’t leave their company, they can’t change their health plan — it’s very restrictive. Now, with that new legislation, it does open up more opportunities for business owners to go out and grab people and some talent.

People who do go off on their own will be eligible for subsidies to buy insurance. Sara Horowitz of the Freelancers Union says those subsidies phase out just under $90,000-a-year in income. She says reform will increase access, but it won’t necessarily hold down cost.

Sara Horowitz: People that are, let’s say, moderate-income earners — kind of like your working middle-class people — are still going to be having problems. With the increase in medical inflation, it’s just going to cost more in the next few years.

Fledgling businesses now have access to subsidies to help them offer insurance to their employees. But it’s still going to be a struggle for anyone founding a startup.

Kristin Heying: I call myself the director, you pretty much have to take on many, many different roles. Grocery shopping, going to the bank, putting the money in.

Kristin Heying helped turn this former meth house in Portland into a community-center/coffee-bar called Cafe au Play.

Heying: We’re getting ready for a work party tomorrow with pastries and coffee.

She believes in offering health insurance to her three employees, but says she can’t afford it right now. She’s on a government-subsidized plan herself. Heying’s 41, raising a daughter, and at times she’s gone without coverage. One of those times, she ended up with a trip to the emergency room… and a $2,500 bill.

Heying: Especially during the time when I was very sick, it really did make me think, “I wish I’d stayed in teaching, because I would have health coverage.” But it would have been years of working on this. And I felt very strongly about finishing what I had started.

She just hopes health care reform will make finishing with insurance a little easier.

I’m Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace Money.

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