A friend of mine in Las Vegas started a human resources consulting business in 2020. Filed the paperwork, built a client base, ran it as a formal entity for five years. Exactly the kind of entrepreneur the governor keeps saying Nevada needs more of. 

This year she closed her business and took a corporate job. The job isn't even in her field. She had to take whatever she could get, and even that was harder to land than it should have been. 

She didn't give up her consulting business because the work dried up. It was because she couldn't afford to continue operating in Nevada. Her health insurance premiums had climbed by nearly $400 a month for her and her spouse, making self-employment a bet no longer worth making. Alone, maybe that doesn't sound like all that much. But taken together with clients pulling back and every other cost rising, it was the final straw.

I run a one-person business in Las Vegas. I have a formal business entity and I'm its only employee, which means I'm too small for group health coverage but I earn too much for substantial state assistance. I'm routed to the individual insurance market like every other solo operator in the state. 

When the enhanced federal premium subsidies lapsed Jan. 1, my premiums went up for the same plan. Another way to say that? I took a massive pay cut. The family budget took a hit. We cut streaming. We cut date nights. We cut the things you can cut. Even with all that, it's basically a wash, because everything else got more expensive at the same time, and the student loans don't pause while we figure it out.

Nevada would like you to know that it's working on this problem. The entrepreneurship part. Not the health insurance part.

Gov. Joe Lombardo signed AB77 in 2023. Nevada was the first state to pass this kind of "Right to Start" economic development legislation. A better name for the bill might have been the Right to Start and Immediately Struggle Act but that doesn't have the same ring to it.

The Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED) created an Office of Entrepreneurship. The Nevada Strategic Growth Initiative launched in 2024, a nonprofit chaired by former Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox, with a stated mission to recruit new businesses and encourage entrepreneurship.

In his 2023 State of the State address, Lombardo called Nevada "the most entrepreneurial-friendly state in the nation." Nearly 300,000 freelancers, contractors and self-employed workers generate more annual revenue in this state than gaming does. This is the kernel of the small-business economy Nevada claims it's building. 

A Culinary Workers Union Local 226 member on the Strip has family health coverage written into the contract: no premium, no deductible. The freelancer the state recruited has whatever the individual market is charging this year. Sure, it's not exactly apples-to-apples here but that's only because the Culinary has legislative power and influence. Freelancers don't have that support in Nevada. We're left to struggle and fight as individuals. 

You can't build an economy around people who work for themselves while making self-employment a bet against their own health. That's what Nevada is doing.

When Congress let the enhanced premium tax credits expire at the end of 2025, the income threshold snapped back. For a single person earning more than a modest middle-class salary, every dollar of premium support vanishes. And nearly half of everyone buying coverage on the individual market is affiliated with a small business or self-employed, even though those independent entrepreneurs make up just 17 percent of the population.

Congress let the subsidies lapse, not Carson City. But Nevada isn't a bystander here. A state that passes a Right to Start law, launches a growth initiative and spends real money telling entrepreneurs to move here should notice when those recruits can't afford to stay. You don't get to take credit for the courtship and then point at Washington when the floor gives way.

The Nevada Division of Insurance approved a 26 percent average rate increase for 2026 marketplace plans. Enrollment dropped at twice the 2025 rate. In the most blunt terms I can use publicly, that's people choosing to be uninsured in the "most entrepreneurial-friendly state" in the nation because that state is doing next to nothing to help manage their costs.

Nevada's public option, the Battle Born State Plan, launched for 2026 coverage. A fraction of enrollees chose it. The plan addresses the insurance company's bottom line, not the freelancer's monthly bill. Carriers met early targets by cutting broker commissions instead of reducing what anyone actually pays.

Nevada Health Link refused to release enrollment data during the 2025 open enrollment period, breaking from its own prior-year practice. Its silence spoke volumes, making no acknowledgment that the floor was giving way under the workers the governor had just courted. 

If the state can spend millions attracting out-of-state businesses, it has the capacity to bridge the gap for the people already here. A simple, temporary state-level premium subsidy for independent contractors would provide the stability these workers need to actually stay in business here. That policy is bound to be met with resistance, sure, but it's also an investment in the actual economy the governor claims to be building.

Lombardo is asking for a second term. He faces Attorney General Aaron Ford on Nov. 3 in one of the most competitive governor's races in the country, and healthcare affordability has moved to the center of it. 

Ford has a platform: medical-debt relief, cheaper prescriptions, a push to get people into the public option. As attorney general, he sued over a federal rule restricting marketplace access. I don't buy all of it. If history holds, he'd get a Democratic Legislature, so the promises are at least mechanically possible. He's also a candidate, and a platform is what a candidate has instead of a record.

But Ford isn't the one who courted us. Lombardo is. And he's now asking the people he recruited to grade his economy in November.

His campaign touts the Battle Born plan and the reinsurance program. It has not once addressed what happened to the floor under the workers his own agenda brought in. So, since he's asking for my vote anyway: Explain to me, governor, why I'm not worth the political capital.

When I complain about the cost of healthcare, people say just deduct it. It's a tidy, sterile talking point. But that deduction lowers my taxable income, not the actual premium bill. 

They say, get on your spouse's plan. Assumes a spouse. Assumes the spouse has employer coverage. 

They say, go back to being a W-2 employee if it's that bad. My friend did, and it's not always that easy.

It's the bootstraps argument. Every one of these treats a symptom. Band-Aids for a gunshot wound don't work. If I'm worth the political capital, governor, stop telling the people you recruited to work around a system that's currently working against them.

My friend did what the state asked. She started a business in Nevada. Built it from nothing. Ran it for five years. Became part of the economy the governor says he's building. She paid her taxes and bought her own insurance on the individual market and didn't ask for much. Then she closed her business.

I'm still here. Still in the individual market, still paying higher premiums for the same care. I don't know how long the math holds. I know the state hasn't asked.

Nevada is still recruiting. Maybe my friend and I aren't the entrepreneurs Nevada has in mind.

Bryan Driscoll is a Las Vegas-based human resources consultant who advises employers on workforce compliance and legal risk.