Not really. If you caught Frontline this past week you'd see many people staying in crappy jobs just so they (and their family) have health insurance. Sometimes it just isn't the right decision to quit your day job and pursue your dreams when you have people depending on you and your health insurance which for many people isn't even an option in the private market.
If you're healthy, and have no dependents .. sure, it's always the right time.
It depends on what you're paying for insurance. When I went solo (with a wife and two kids, btw), the cost of private insurance wasn't much more than my corporate plan, so it wasn't a factor.
Getting private insurance is pretty much impossible if you're not healthy, though, I'll give you that.
In terms of lowered opportunity costs, yes.
In terms of selling services that lower other peoples costs, yes. (In boom times, they might have other priorities. To quote pg, Amazon didn't become Amazon by buying the cheapest servers. But right now, they might be persuaded into buying your new cheap servers.)
Really, its just the mainstream media waking up to what pg has been saying for the last six months.
Mainstream media isn't waking up, they're just trying to find something to write about and are using an effective formula. Take something that is effecting almost everyone (economy woes), and then factor in something that people want (a new career/dream job) and Bob's-your-uncle you got yourself an article that people will read (and you can sell ads on).