Freelancers Need Universal Health Care Too
- Posted by: Daniel Brook , Ted McGrath
- on October 3, 2007 at 5:28 pm
As heartening as it is to see universal health care back on the national agenda, it’s puzzling that when the presidential candidates talk about their health-care proposals, they only talk about poor kids and Wal-Mart workers. This doesn’t square with my experience of the health-care crisis. I know plenty of people who are sweating health-care coverage. None of them are poor kids. And they don’t work at Wal-Mart.
The people I know who are worried sick about coverage work for themselves, many in creative fields. Most of these freelancers and entrepreneurs are in the cross hairs of our health-care crisis—and you wouldn’t know it from watching the presidential campaign.
But you would know it if you bothered to look at the statistics. While the French just held an election in which one of the central issues was their anemic rate of self-employment, America acts as if all is well when in fact we’re one of the only developed countries with a rate of self-employment even lower than France’s. While surveys show that Americans are nearly twice as entrepreneurial as Europeans, we’re only half as likely to actually become self-employed.
| Quote: |
| I know plenty of people who are sweating health-care coverage. None of them are poor kids. |
What is holding Americans back? In two words: health care. If you’re lucky enough to be healthy, you can purchase insurance on the private market. But even then, the costs are rising out of control. As a freelance writer, I buy my own insurance. My premium went up 25 percent this year and I didn’t even get the pleasure of taking up smoking or skydiving.
There are groups for the self-employed that offer coverage, but often those who need it most can’t get it. A self-employed friend of mine gets his insurance through the local chamber of commerce. Its website explains that its insurance plan is explicitly “designed for young healthy individuals.” Even laudable attempts to get mass coverage for the self-employed are often prohibitively expensive. The least expensive coverage offered by the New York-based Freelancers Union costs more than $1,000 a year for individuals and $4,000 for families—and it comes with a $10,000 deductible. There’s only so much even well-meaning organizations can do when our government is out to lunch.
In other developed countries, where self-employment rates tend to be higher, taking the leap to working for yourself doesn’t affect your health care coverage or your family’s. In publicly funded health care systems, entrepreneurs pay less into the system during the few lean years that often accompany starting a business. Once you get off the ground, you pay more. That benefits the country’s health and its economy. But here, if you can even get coverage, you pay a flat fee regardless of whether your business had a good year or a bad one. And if you get seriously ill, your business makes less and you owe more. No surprise that half of American bankruptcies are the result of health-care bills.
The problem with our health-care debate isn’t just that it glosses over a huge portion of people who are affected by the crisis, but that by not taking them into account, we may end up achieving universal coverage without unleashing the talented and entrepreneurial. Just requiring everyone to have health insurance won’t solve the problem. That’s what Massachusetts recently did statewide and what some candidates are suggesting on a national level. But under such a system, unless you’re very poor, you still pay more if you have a family; you still have to pay a flat fee unrelated to your business income; and you still have the catch-22 of paying more when you get sick and are earning less. Without a solution funded through progressive taxation, simply requiring everyone to get insurance will still hold back our millions of would-be entre-preneurs. Health-insurance payments will continue to act as an “ambition tax.”
Lately, Americans have come to think of the governmental safety net as being not for the ambitious but for people who can’t take care of themselves—like poor kids. But the metaphor “safety net” comes from the piece of circus equipment that lets the trapeze artist attempt his or her most daring feats.
It’s time the proverbial trapeze artists among us spoke up. And time the candidates listened.
DISCUSSION: 9 Comments
Great article and so relevant. I am a freelance designer and many of my friends are in the same boat. Am I supposed to work for some corporation for the rest of my life just for health-care…..it does discourage self-employment, as well as, many other types of jobs. We need a solution.
We have to begin the transition away from the terrible system we currently have somehow + sometime, but it is so very important that people be aware we will still have much farther to go, especially if all we are doing is creating a “play or pay” system (like Massachusetts). To have any legs at all, universal access must include healthcare for the self-employed, and as your article points out, there is much more to this problem than can be fixed by a phrase. Great article. Thanks.
I recently became self employed, this article brilliantly illustrates one of the greatest overlooked problems in the health care debacle.
Health care is an everyone problem, not just poor people. We need to develop solutions that fix it for everyone!
Utopian ideas about “universal” health care leave out some of the most important parts: Who pays? Oh of course, the rich…
How much health care are we entitled to? As much as we can afford…but who decides this?
Where is the incentive for health practitioners to invent, to excell, to take risks? Just look closely at health care in Canada or Great Britain to see how well “universal” health care works. Or better yet, listen to the complaints about the Veterans Affairs health care system to see what happens when government gets involved.
As one who is self-employed and is unable to get regular health coverage, I think this is a very important story to tell. Anyone who has had any kind of health issue, even minor, in the past five years, won’t be covered. In Calif. there is guaranteed health coverage, however there is a long wait and it’s about $400 per month for an individual and the coverage is minimal. A serious: why bother unless you have serious health issues.
In regards to the Utopia posting:
- The rich doesn’t pay for health coverage in a universal system – the population does through taxes. And if you think the rich pays the majority of taxes you are gravely ignorant.
- Health practioners to invent and excel? This isn’t about inventing and excelling. It’s about providing access to ALL – not just those fortunate to have employers who provide this for them.
Canada and England do not have perfect systems, but the U.S. is fatally flawed in having absolutely no system for the general population (that is those not on Medicare, etc.). I lived in England and got sick (and likewise during a trip to Ireland) and was able to go to a doctor free of charge (in Ireland the cost was $15). Here, that same 15 minute visit would have cost me $250. So, yes, let’s see what happens when the government gets involved.
Bravo on this important article! I’m a thirty-something freelance writer and cancer survivor. I can personally attest to the detriments of expensive and profit focused health care in this country hindered by costly insurance plans with high deductibles as well as limited coverage. I left my 9 to 5 office job in early 2004 for the freelance world to be diagnosed with a cancer recurrence one month later. I now pay almost $500 monthly (with a $1,500 deductible) for a bare bones individual plan focused on America’s allopathic medical model. I lived in Europe and clearly witnessed the freedom people have there through universal health care. Europeans have affordable access to health care and education: two hallmarks of democracy. America is a young country, but when will we catch up??
I was forwarded this article from someone who had just read a similar post of mine on BetweenTheBlogs.com. I’m a freelancer and this year, since my wife has MS, we will spend close to $30,000 on health care. We both have individual policies. The time for political rhetoric is long over. The time for action on the part of the politicians is now. If not, then all that will be left is the squishy splattering sound of those who were barely hanging on as they lose their grips and fall to their financial demise.
Uninformed, close-minded people like “dunroamin” are one-half of the roadblock to UHC. The other half is held up by lobbyists for private health insurance companies who take as much as possible and give as little as possible.dunroamin asks some moderately clueless questions, followed by some thoroughly clueless pot-shots at UHC in Canada and the UK. In response to the question about who pays and how much do we get: (I realize that the following phrase will elicit girlish screams of terror from anyone who has ever watched Fox News in earnest, but) “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” In response to the implication that Canada and the UK have such awful problems with their UHC systems that a simple glance would show clearly why it is a terrible idea: this is false, a straw man argument, and a favorite claim of right-wing talking heads.Take a look at this collection of handy charts etc to see just how backwards such claims are. Anyone reading this: please do share this link with others. http://www.flickr.com/photos/28400609@N02/sets/72157619960566626/
When I got divorced it was the health insurance I missed the most. I’m self-employed and have Lupus, which is a red flag to every insurance company to not insure me. My state (WI) has a high risk insurance plan for people like me. Twice I applied for it, twice I was rejected for not sending in the premium. Along with the rejection letter (both times) was a check refunding my already paid premium back to me. You gotta love the “efficiency” of government in action.