“Please Don’t Get Me Started”: Design, Entrepreneurialism and Obamacare

“The Millennial generation (those students that begin college in 2000) are an entrepreneurial generation,” says Art Center’s Mark Breitenberg (who will be on an upcoming show about Art Center’s design accelerator). But two challenges…

on this DnA, about student debt, that college grads can now stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26. But what happens next? Do would-be business owners — of any generation — who do not want to run the risk of not having health insurance feel compelled to take a job, with benefits, instead of strike out on their own?

With Obamacare on the horizon, we want to hear from you about this. Do you think Obamacare could benefit you as an entrepreneur? Alternatively, do you fear it could limit your benefits at your job? Are you planning to check out the exchange when it opens Tuesday? (Feel free to comment on the Obamacare logo as well; this is a design show!)

I posed this question to DnA’s DJs and this is what design journalist Mallery Roberts Morgan had to say. She lived in France for 20 years before moving back to her native US a few years back:

“Frances – please don’t get me started…. after living in Europe for over twenty years….I could have never been freelance and done the work I have done over the last fifteen years if I had been living in America with its CRIMINAL healthcare system. The most shocking thing EVER was to move here five years ago and be faced with being freelance and trying to live like a dignified human being with proper healthcare!!”

And here’s Guy Horton:

“A lot of post-meltdown employment in architecture has been part-time or consultant contracted work so there is a floating population of recession refugees out there with no benefits and limited hours so they don’t punch through the full-time ceiling that would trigger a firm to have to offer health insurance. In terms of architecture, the ACA seems to dovetail nicely with the trend toward more consultants and fewer full-time staff opportunities. Those firms that staff up and staff down with the tide of projects now have more of a mandate because of the recession’s impact on hiring. I wonder if this isn’t increasingly becoming the norm. Corporate firms notwithstanding.”