You're implying that the risk a young, healthy person takes is entirely within their control, but even a healthy person can get hit by a car or get injured in some way unrelated to their "fitness" level.

The reason we need to fix health care is simple: if you are dying or seriously injured, and you don't have health insurance, you are going to the ER regardless and someone, somewhere will end up paying for it. Let's all be adults about the situation and just implement something that works.

Risk tolerance is neither a useful proxy/predictor for entrepreneurial activity or entrepreneurial success [0,1]. Instead, it is more appropriate to say that entrepreneurs have a higher tolerance for ambiguity [2]. The most current/best research on entrepreneurial ways of thinking suggests that successful entrepreneurs tend to look for systematic exploits that exist within current market conceptions by assessing the ambiguity in markets and products [3]. Within a pure conception of risk, risk is not the right term but rather uncertainty/ambiguity. However, it is very easy for that uncertainty to look very risky when existing models of risk are employed. That is how the competitive advantage is created...finding a new business model/prouct to address market uncertainty that is low risk by relying on a different conceptualization of the underlying risk model and its assumptions. This is why entrepreneurship so often results in creative destruction of existing solutions and markets...because the new risk model is more efficient and/or lower risk and it had yet to be pursued because existing models (for whatever reason...e.g., technological progress) made the new model look extremely risky.

[0] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1476127004047617 [1] https://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/weve-got-the-relationshi... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/acton/2012/05/17/the-one-key-tr... (or you could just cite Schumpeter/Knight...this is just more readable) [3] Sarasvathy, Saras D. Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009.

What about people with a chronic but completely controllable condition?

Dismissing anyone with an illness from entrepreneurship because you think they can't handle the stress is ridiculous.

This is not a full picture of entrepreneurship or small business ownership. Entrepreneurship, especially in "middle America", also encompasses starting your own hair salon chain with an innovative approach to curly hair, or trying to get your dog-washing device manufactured and into stores, or selling Ukrainian sausages and imported chocolates. Sure, on HN it's all about healthy and young people at the mercy of investors, but out in the world it's imperfectly healthy sometimes-old people who use savings and family and friends to get things going. Especially if we're talking about health insurance in Iowa.

When I quit my job to run a company, I was very healthy. I just couldn't buy health insurance on the open market because I had a pre-existing condition.

This was prior to ACA, so I ended up paying through the nose for COBRA.

Pre-existing conditions aren't always debilitating. They can be things that, when treated appropriately, don't impact your ability to start a company at all: diabetes, amputation, cosmetic issues like severe hair loss, sleep apnea, amputation, ect, ect.

That's a terrible way to look at things. There are many people, myself included, who developed a pre existing conditions while a teenager. I require health insurance. So now, you're telling me I shouldn't be able to be an entrepreneur because of that?