What Does The Health Care Bill Mean For Start Ups? Ctd

McArdle is –surprise!– not fully buying that the bill will juice entrepreneurship. Her bottom line:

On net, I'd suspect that this will be positive for entrepreneurship–but I don't know that this will translate into a lot more growth.  Enabling people to become self-employed is a fine thing, but it is not the same as enabling them to start transformative new businesses.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"If you're trying to figure out why J Street, the left-wing pro-Israel group, came into existence, just take a look at the schedule for this week's AIPAC conference, at the Washington Convention Center. The list of speakers, apart from the usual suspects (Bibi, Hillary, and the like) includes analysts and advocates from such organizations as the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, CAMERA, and so on — the full range of conservative-leaning think tanks…. Most American Jews voted for Obama; most American Jews are liberal; and most American Jews understand the difference between the legitimate security needs of the State of Israel and the theological, political and economic needs of the small minority of Israelis who have settled the West Bank.

So would it hurt [AIPAC] to bring in speakers from the Meretz Party, from the kibbutz movement, from the New Israel Fund, from the Reform Movement, so that the AIPAC attendees could hear for themselves the views of Zionists who disagree with the policies of Israel's right-wing parties? Yes, I suppose it would hurt. AIPAC is interested mainly in presenting an oversimplified vision of the Middle East to its members," – Jeffrey Goldberg.

Sunlight Is Good Medicine

Ezra Klein highlights a little discussed feature of the bill:

[H]ospitals will have to post prices. Insurance products will be presented with standardized information, consumer ratings and quality measures. The payments physicians take from drug and device companies will be in a public database. There will be independent funding for research on the relative effectiveness of different treatments. Some of these changes are small and some are big, but put together, the system is going to become a lot more visible in the coming years.

What Does The Health Care Bill Mean For Start Ups?

Chris Cameron wonders:

Companies with 25 or fewer employees could potentially be eligible to receive a 35% tax credit for buying health insurance as early as this year. By 2014, those companies could see that credit rise to 50%, while even smaller companies could receive a full tax credit to provide insurance for their employees granted their average salaries are below $25,000 annually.

My guess is that a majority of startups (especially smaller, younger startups strapped for cash) would fall somewhere under these tax break brackets, which could entice them to provide coverage. Having the ability to affordably provide health insurance to employees is a tool that could prove useful in attracting and maintaining a talented team at a smaller level.

The World, As One-Big-Neighborhood

Ryan Avent picks up on this map and applies the thought experiment to the globe:

If the world’s population were built at Brooklyn density, it would occupy about 70% of the state of Texas. At Manhattan densities, you could fit the whole world into Virginia and North Carolina. Leaving the rest of the world empty.

In practice, humans have to spread out in order to cultivate land to feed themselves, and agriculture aside, there are significant gains to distribution of population around the world (including the utility gains of satisfaction of varying tastes). But, you know, think about it.

Country First

Matt Steinglass echoes the Dish:

If [Douthat] wants to help make sure that health-care reform doesn't increase the deficit, he can start encouraging Republican members of Congress to vote to make sure Medicare payments actually get cut, and to make sure that the tax on Cadillac health-insurance plans actually kicks in. It would be much better for the country if Republicans devoted their energies to working to improve the health-care reform that's just been passed, rather than sitting back and watching with the intention of blaming it on Democrats if it fails.

Will Obama Stick It To The GOP?

Saletan sees some signs:

His political advisers are hinting at a more aggressive strategy: portraying Republicans who oppose the legislation as opposing all of its benefits. In the Bush administration, this was standard practice.

Any Democrat who resisted any component of a bill was accused of opposing the bill’s objective. If you complained about labor provisions of the bill to establish a federal department of homeland security, Republicans said you were against homeland security. If you objected to part of the “Patriot Act,” they said you were unpatriotic. If you criticized Bush’s execution of the Iraq war, they said you were undermining our troops.

Obama has avoided this scorched-earth style of politics. But his advisers seem ready to try it. “Let them tell a child with a pre-existing condition, ‘We don’t think you should be covered,’ ” David Axelrod said of Republicans last night…

This is the risk Republicans have taken by voting unanimously against health care reform. They’ve bet their whole party against it. If the public hates the program, they’ll be rewarded at the polls. But if the public likes it, they’re in trouble. And if the public fears it might be taken away, they could suffer a beating, as they did in 1996 when voters feared cuts in Medicare.

I don’t think this is “Rovian” by the way. It’s called contrast and compare. If the bill becomes more popular, what people will remember is that the GOP did all they could to kill it, and every tea-party meltdown will be in the minds of voters.

Obama’s genius is not attacking his opposition head-first. It is patiently assisting its self-destruction. First Clinton; then McCain; then Palin; now the GOP as a whole.