A Quote by Eric Ries
Here in Silicon Valley, I have taken part in hundreds of conversations trying to convince people to dive in and become entrepreneurs. All too often, innovators with good, safe, jobs are unwilling to put their family's access to health care at risk by walking away from company-backed medical insurance.
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The result was, of course, that today, tragically, more than 40 million Americans don't have health insurance, and for many, not having health insurance means they don't have access to good health care.
If you're self-employed, between jobs, or can't get insurance through work, you'll have access to affordable health insurance as good as Congressman Paul Ryan's.
Medical professionals, not insurance company bureaucrats, should be making health care decisions.
America tends to assume Silicon Valley-style innovators can drive quick and transformative changes, but even Silicon Valley's would-be masters of the universe have discovered that energy transitions are subject to time spans and technical constraints that defy their reach.
As a physician and a U.S. senator, I have warned since the very beginning about many troubling aspects of Mr. Obama's unprecedented health-insurance mandate. Not only does he believe he can order you to buy insurance, the president also incorrectly equates health insurance coverage with medical care.
Gingrich first backed the concept in 1993, "I am for people, individuals - exactly like automobile insurance - individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.
In the ideology of the new Silicon Valley, work was for the owned. Play was for the owners. There was a fundamental capitalism at work: While they abhorred the idea of being a wage slave, the young men of Silicon Valley were not trying to tear down the capitalist system. They were trying to become its new masters.
It is taken for granted that workers should receive their pay partly in kind, in the form of medical care provided by the employer. How come? Why single out medical care? Surely food is no less essential to life than medical care. Why is it not at least as logical for workers to be required to buy their food at the company store as to be required to buy their medical care at the company store?
Today, all patients accepted for treatment at St. Jude's are treated without regard for the family's ability to pay. Everything beyond what is covered by insurance is taken care of, and for those without insurance, all of the medical costs are absorbed by the hospital.
There is much that public policy can do to support American entrepreneurs. Health insurance reform will make it easier for entrepreneurs to take a chance on a new business without putting their family's health at risk. Tort reform will make it easier to take prudent risks on new products in a number of sectors.
Many people have already lost their health care, millions already lost their health care, because they have it and can't use it because of the explosive skyrocketing premiums, or they literally lost their doctors or insurance plans or their access to health care through Obamacare.
Experience taught me that working families are often just one pay check away from economic disaster. And it showed me first-hand the importance of every family having access to good health care.
To be without health insurance in this country means to be without access to medical care. But health is not a luxury, nor should it be the sole possession of a privileged few. We are all created b'tzelem elohim - in the image of God - and this makes each human life as precious as the next. By 'pricing out' a portion of this country's population from health care coverage, we mock the image of God and destroy the vessels of God's work.
It's almost a cliche that great Silicon Valley entrepreneurs don't go sit on a beach when they make a lot of money; they get back to work building another company or at least investing in other people's companies.
For people who have health insurance, we can provide health insurance reforms that make the insurance they have more secure. And we can do that mostly by using money that every expert agrees is being wasted and is currently in the existing health care system.
While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company, they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs.
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