If you had unlimited funds how long would it take you to start an Insurance Company?

[ThomWV]

Let's say you had $100 Billion and wanted to start a health insurance company. You can hire anyone you want at prevailing wages, no problem there and you could borrow qualified employees from your other businesses to get it going. Oh, and as if that wasn't enough there will also be no legal or licensing barriers to hinder you entering the business. Think you could have one up and running in a month? No? How about six months?

Why would it take a moment longer to put a Public Option in place?

[donco6]

1. If I had a hundred billion, I'd open a bunch of hospitals.

Fuck insurance. I'd provide the service directly and die a happy, contented man.

[WillieW]

2. If I had unlimited funds I would not want to- but enjoy my life and travel

[tularetom]

3. I could start a health insurance company with my paltry savings.

I'd just collect premiums and deny all claims. Soon I'd have unlimited funds.

Isn't that how they do it now?

[BlooInBloo]

4. 6 months, maybe. But then, I don't move at the speed of government....

But even with that accounted for, there's no reason whatsoever for longer than a year being required.

[greennina]

5. To do things at the scale of the public option...

maybe two years. It takes a long time to find that many qualified people. I worked for a start-up that had $50 million in the bank and hired 300 employees. It took us two years to find the employees despite spending about $20k per employee for the ones we found through recruiting agencies. About half of them came from one so that was about $3 million! It would be easy to find the lowest level people, but even then you're looking at a few months to write the corporate policies then a few months make a training curriculum so you could train them then a few months to hire all of them. When you get two levels up from them, it's much harder to find people. I wouldn't want to try it in less than two years.

The thing to do is to roll it out like the new free cellphone service. Pick a state, like MI, that really needs help then work your way to the north east then do the rest of the midwest then the far west then eventually around 2030 start helping the repukes in the south. Then you could learn as you go without creating too large of a screw-up.