Tangent: COBRA is a really bad idea too. First, COBRA is probably more expensive than health care you acquire yourself, because most employers acquire highest-common-denominator coverage and hide the expense in payroll and benefits accounting. Second, COBRA has a ticking time limit on it, which is exactly what you don't want with health insurance (and why you never want month-to-month or temporary coverage). You might as well not insure yourself if any catastrophic event is as likely to bankrupt you with insurance as without it, which is what happens when something bad happens in the latter part of your COBRA term.
COBRA is a ticking time bomb. But it does have the nice property that it keeps your "continuous coverage" which is very important in the face of any pre-existing conditions. That can be a very big deal.
We had COBRA coverage when we started Matasano. Continuous coverage or not, insurance company beaurocrats refused coverge for us. I'm not sure what continuous coverage does for you once you obtain coverage, but in Illinois it doesn't do a thing to help you get it in the first place.
Mandated insurance with guaranteed-issue is a tax on the young and healthy to subsidize the old and sick. My plan, for example, is illegal in NY and NJ which have strong community rating requirements.
You can certainly think that taxing single 20somethings to subsidize families and the elderly is a good decision as a matter of policy, but it's not going to do a whole lot to increase entrepreneurship.
What mandatory insurance scheme is not a tax on the fortunate to subsidize the unfortunate?
If you make healthy people buy fairly priced catastrophic coverage so that if they have an accident they don't declare bankruptcy and stick the rest of us with the bill, that's not a subsidy. It becomes a subsidy when you force them to pay the same rates as less healthy people, or force them to buy comprehensive policies that go beyond the coverage that they actually need.
I can't agree more. If we must discuss things at the heartless, what's-in-it-for-us level: Just because you may get sick doesn't mean you'd be a bad entrepreneur. One of the best mobile programmers I know has gout, and it's pretty difficult for him to get coverage.