[SwellJoe]

I've got Unicare's cheapest plan and pay about $80/month. It'll cover anything terrible, and otherwise I'm an active healthy vegetarian non-smoking 30-something male. Women pay more in this age range, but not a huge amount more.

If you can't handle paying $30 co-pay for doctors visits, and similar on prescriptions, and having no dental or vision, then you're probably not quite ready to dive into business--unless you raise money. You do need health insurance. A single illness can wipe out your company in very short order--and not just because you're not on the job while recovering. The corporate veil is thin very early on, and if you've got corporate money in the bank, your debtors will want it.

[cwilbur]

Seconded. In the past year I've wound up visiting the hospital twice for things that were, in the words of my doctor, "total random flukes" -- not lifestyle related, could have happened to anyone. Fortunately, they were fairly easy to fix. Total cost, $75 per visit. If I had had no health insurance and went to the hospital anyway, I'd have been looking at a five figure bill, and probably bankruptcy, for either of them; if I had no health insurance and did not go to the hospital for either, I'd probably be dead now. Or the ambulance would have taken me to the hospital, and I'd be that much more in debt.

You need health insurance. Bad things happen. Flukes happen. It's not about having the balls to face the risk of no health insurance and stare it in the face; it's about careful planning - the same kind of planning that means you incorporate instead of trusting the chance that nobody will sue you.