What does healthcare have to do with innovation? Ask an entrepreneur.

It seems appropriate on the day when the health care exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act to look at an example from my own life.  When I opened a freelance consultancy in 2001, I ran up against my first hurdle: trying to get health insurance for me and my children.  My options at the time amounted to the following:

1.  Pay for a COBRA extension of my previous, employer-based plan: $650 per month.
2.  Purchase an individual plan: $0 per month.

On the surface, it might look like a no-brainer.  Take the individual plan!  But the reason it costs nothing is because not one company who did business in Illinois at the time would provide me even a quote for a plan.  You see, two of my children carried a scarlet "A" on their medical history: asthma.  Although we now know that their asthma was not really traditional asthma, but more akin to "exercise-induced" asthma that has not prevented either of them from participating in high-school athletics, the actuarial tables prohibited me from being able to find a plan.  Even looking at professional associations who offered plans to freelancers, no options existed.

So today, as I reach the halfway point of my second year of freelancing, my wife's employer-based plan covers me and my children.  If I found myself in the same situation now, however, as of today I would have the following options:

1.  Pay for a COBRA extension of my previous, employer-based plan:  $650 per month (2000 $).
2.  Pay for a platinum insurance plan through the Illinois health exchange:  $500 per month (2013 $).

That's right.  A plan worth $882 per month in 2013 dollars would now cost me about $500 per month.  (Note that my 2000 plan only covered 80% of most costs, while the platinum plan covers 90%.)

The broader implication of this is that with a marketplace for individuals to obtain health insurance, a person's career path no longer has to be tied to employers.  As Martin Wolf noted in the Financial Times, employer-based plans create "a form of serfdom".  Imagine what we might see if a nation of workers had the freedom to move from job to job, or could pursue an entrepreneurial enterprise without having to worry about whether they could obtain insurance.  Note, I did not say pay for it, just obtain it.  This is not about getting subsidized or free insurance, just access to it.

Our nation grew up on the belief that innovation drives prosperity.  Innovation comes from the freedom to pursue opportunity.  Now that we have a system that removes one obstacle to the entrepreneurship we need to thrive, I have hope that we will create a culture that can finally solve many of our wicked problems.