Strong forces are spreading disinformation about President Obama's national healthcare proposal.
The primary suspects are Health insurance lobbyists and their P.R. machines. There is a lot of money riding on this - last year $7.8 Billion in profits were diverted away from providing care.
In an article a few weeks ago, kos came up with a formula for the true cost of not having universal healthcare - based on the premise that losing current benefits is the barrier which keeps many people from launching an entrepreneurial endeavor.
But I think there's another component which his formula doesn't take into account - the talent who would join the entrepreneur if they weren't afraid of losing their benefits.
We have all weighed the pros and cons of leaving our place of employment. A lot of us have considered more altruistic work, or employers with an eco-friendly footprint. Many smaller employers and nonprofits are unable to offer benefits.
As someone who became insured during the last year, I see another faction who wants to kill the national healthcare plan. The mediocre employers.
What would happen if the playing field was cleared of healthcare obstacles? How would the labor force redistribute itself? In a world where talent is rewarded and the cream rises to the top, I would expect to find that the most successful businesses are the ones who are able to attract the best people. But providing healthcare is one barrier which small, startup, or nonprofit companies can't overcome. We end up with a paradigm where, because of their size, businesses that have consolidated power can also provide better benefits than their small business counterparts.
It's Dilbert on a grand scale: An employer doesn't need to be competent, they merely need to be large enough to provide stability and benefits.
In addition to kos' formula as to the number of people who would start their own businesses, I think we also have to calculate the number of people who would finally leave their corporate jobs for one without the same kind of safety net a large corporation provides.
In fact, I'm beginning to think it's this second wave of worker migrations that would upset the subtle fascism of the status quo, and it's what your local Chamber of Commerce fears the most.