As usual, absolutism and broad brush painting dominates the discussion. So many people aren't arguing about the issue, they are arguing about the views of the world that they developed long ago and have firmly placed the world into.

Anyhoo, I'm as business oriented a guy as anyone here, and firmly believe in meritocracy, which is easy for me of course since I figure I have more merit than everyone else :-) But still, I believe in getting compensated in return for what you accomplish, and that the lure of such compensation is the ultimate power source for our economy.

OTOH, the obsession about the fact that some people in the world might actually game the system and benefit in some way from your work, to the point that you'd rather destroy the system and the benefits it could provide to honest folks, seems niggardly at best (and no, that's not a racial slur, for the linguistically challenged.) God knows that business itself is one of the most gamed systems out there, providing questionably legal benefit to many people at our expense.

And I have to point out how stupidly difficult it is to have health insurance if you want to start a small business. That in and of itself is a huge negative pressure on innovation and wealth creation in this country. If I'd had dependents, I couldn't have started my company certainly. Clearly the existing system, which has had decades to prove its efficacy, wasn't doing anything to change that. And I don't see how it is going to change on that front.

And I would also have to point out that if good health insurance is only available via large companies, then that gives those large companies a level of de facto control over people's lives that probably most of us would not want. What better way to lock you in than to make it almost impossible for you to leave because of health insurance issues? Then they really aren't to blame for that lock-in, they just get to benefit from it.