That's interesting. Mine doesn't. We can afford to pay the candidates we want to hire. We could not simply snap our fingers and solve candidate insurance problems; it took about half a year. What's your startup again?

You also misread my comment. Losing candidates sucked but did not particularly slow us down. I didn't argue that health care retarded Matasano; I do a good enough job of that on my own. I'm arguing that if health insurance ruled out people even when we offered a good wage, it must be doubly hard for people who want to start from zero.

[oh, hey, ps for readers: we're hiring: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=953114 --- of course we have health insurance]

My only point is that your comment can be made about ANY expense. Yes, the US wage system, health care system, office space system, minimum business tax system, credit card processing system, etc, all retard startups.

Most of these have economies of scale, so they will hit startups harder than big business. I don't see any particular reason to focus on health care rather than wages, office space or accounting services.

They're different because there isn't a huge amount of uncertainty in office space, taxes, credit card processing, or even wages if you don't leave your day job until you have cash flows. There is nothing but uncertainty with health insurance.

But what's your point? Yes, Chris, it would definitely accelerate startups if the government gave everyone a $50,000 refundable tax credit for starting a tech company. Also free offices would be great. The question posed was, "would you be more likely to start if". If better wages: yes. If health care: yes. If free office space: yes. If no transaction fees: yes.

Why are you singling out one of the riskiest problems with starting up and implying that it's dumb to address it?

Funny: "Matasano" in Chile is a slang term for doctors, and not a particularly nice one.

It translates to something like "Healthy-person killer".

Yup. We found that out a month after we picked the name, when we hired a friend from Argentina. We liked the name even more afterward. It suits our particular corner of the industry.