When you're reliant on healthcare and live in America that is first concern before anything else. Not to turn a post political, but the employer-tied healthcare situation in America is borderline a form of slavery. In tech it is simply well-paid slavery. I rarely if ever take vacations, and due to healthcare requirements cannot explore starting my own company or being without an employer to take an extended sabbatical from work. I am well compensated for my role and generally do well but if I lose my health insurance my life can be measured in months. It's a stressor that is hard to describe.

Yeah, and it ultimately harms everything. It's so interesting that ultimately this system would produce lower quality products and suppress innovation. I wonder if countries with more flexibility in health-care will have more start-ups?

Almost all other developed countries have more flexibility with healthcare! Certainly it's never been part of any of my career decisions (in Australia). I don't believe it has much bearing on the number of start-ups, even successful ones - the US has too many other factors that overwhelmingly give it the advantage there - but I'm pretty sure it has been shown to affect upward mobility in general (America rates quite low on that compared to other countries with better safety nets and public/single payer healthcare systems, though other factors like cost of education almost certainly come into play).

Nothing borderline about that.