--~$250 a month is still an insane price for a single person. I live in Illinois of all places and have decent HMO coverage for less than $100. Granted, I am not currently in a start up, but in a business of about 15 employees. Various catastrophic-only plans (assuming your state offers them) can be had for significantly less if you're healthy.-- //this is clearly not right, being dumb today and forgot to add in the employer contribution (I believe it comes to about 200 to 250 in total for our particular plan, so it is comparable, but my point about catastrophic-only plans (which are often outlawed in states like Massachusetts, still stands //

The problem with MassCare (and ObamaCare) is that their mix of guaranteed issue, mandates, community rating, minimum creditable coverage guidelines, and subsidies still inflates the price of health insurance, and state subsidies can't keep up. This was evident in Massachusetts as early as 2007, right after MassCare began to be implemented (see this report for exmaple: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=14237)

I think the Startup America concept is admirable. Would that the federal government understood the real problem with starting a business in the United States right now isn't the lack of a couple billion in government programs, but the regulatory barriers and inflation in commodities and products like health insurance that prevent new firms from entering the market, inflation that the federal government has in many ways helped create.