Can you explain what you're talking about? I run a small business and my understanding is that unless you have like 50+ employees this insurance stuff doesn't even effect you.
Honestly though if it is a business killer(which you know, I don't really see how it could be unless I am running a minimum wage fast food drive through and not a tech company)I will just drop my employees' wages and tell them it is to pay for their health insurance. I really doubt I will need to do this though.
Maybe I'm just a victim of my own FUD - Whenever I think about setting out on my own, I get all kinds of doubts about what kinds of taxes that I would owe, avoiding a patent minefield, how to make insurance work, etc.
To be honest, now that you've actually called me on it, I think that those are really just surface concerns. I think my real concern is more about being able to cope emotionally - I've seen multiple discussions here about significant depression symptoms in startups.
Honestly what a lot of the hip startup people with the blogs in silicon valley do scares the hell out of me as well, and I guess that is a lot of Y combinator.
I worked as a developer for awhile so I have some money, and now I am bootstrapping some stuff and I have hired another dev and we also do contract mobile work to supplement. We outsource most of the design work. I have been doing this since around May and I need to check the finances but I am either slightly in the black or slightly in the red(this includes my living expenses). At the current revenue I have a runway of like 50 years though so I'm not too concerned.
We have a bunch of cool stuff cooking in development and have partnered with some other companies on some stuff so hopefully we can stop the contract work early next year.
These kids doing all these startups with little runway, no clear method of generating revenue and basically no experience out in the valley are crazy imo. I think the only people making real money are the VCs and a very few lucky founders. It kind of seems exploitative to me but I'm not out there so maybe it is much better than I think.
Honestly though if it is a business killer(which you know, I don't really see how it could be unless I am running a minimum wage fast food drive through and not a tech company)I will just drop my employees' wages and tell them it is to pay for their health insurance. I really doubt I will need to do this though.