Health Insurance and the Freelance Writer

Allena, this is such a good question/topic. Yes, I’m a full-time freelance writer and yes, I have health insurance. (Paid in full by yours truly.) It’s expensive and I’ve got a high deductible. Essentially, it doesn’t cover much. And it makes me sick – no pun intended – to think about much I pay every year for something I rarely use, and when I do, I still have unreasonable out of pockets to pick up as well. There is no union where I live/work. And no trade organization that I can find offers any health insurance. Disability, yes; health insurance, no. This is a subject that makes my blood boil and there’s got to be a better way for self-employed people to have access to benefits of company-employed people. Somewhat off subject, but a bit relevant: did you notice the NYT magazine article yesterday (Sunday, June 7) regarding the state of freelancing in today’s world? Interesting.

Sorry! Left out a word. The sentence should have read: “And it makes me sick – no pun intended – to think about HOW much I pay every year for something I rarely use…”

Guess it really does make me sick… I hit the “send” button too soon. ; )

I’m in the same boat as Nan. I have a high deductible and an HSA. (That’s another story – while the money I put in the HSA is tax free, there’s a small monthly bank fee.)

All policies are not the same. I used an independent insurance broker to help me wade through the options, and she found a better policy for me than my old one. For maybe $10 dollars more per month than my previous policy, I have far more coverage. For example, an annual procedure cost me $260 out of pocket in 2007. Under the new plan, the same thing only cost me $26 a year later – and I was no where near meeting my $2,500 deductible! Even with this plan I consider myself under-insured, since my coverage will only really kick in if I have an injury or major illness.

Lesson learned: a good insurance broker can save you a lot of time and money.

Dear Alena,

I’m like Nan. I’ve been self-insured for almost 5 years. I purchased a high deductible ($10,000), catastrophic policy.

The sad thing is, the money I pay each month is money I cannot use for actual health care. All my prescriptions, holistic health care visits, etc. come out of my pocket. The policy is really only useful if I’m in a terrible accident or get a life-threatening disease and have to stay in the hospital.

The state of healthcare is pathetic. Health insurance isn’t about health, it’s about sickness, and it’s about insurance companies making money.

And by the way, if car insurance companies cut you a break if you’re a good driver, why don’t health insurance companies cut you a break if you’re in good health?

Martha

Sorry, Allena, this ABSOLUTELY can be an impossible situation. My son was born with a pre-existing condition that required brain surgery, and I was just learning that I was pre-diabetic when I went freelance. What a nightmare. Even insurance brokers could not get us coverage that cost less than 1000 dollars a month, and the plans were much less comprehensive than my COBRA coverage, which also cost 1000 per month. It was a nightmare. Some states do have it better than ours (Georgia), providing pools that people can buy into, but we had no such option. If you’re considering freelancing – and there are pre-existing conditions anywhere in your family – you must study everything that’s available, and what the costs could be. Also, a number of insurance companies that claim to cater to entrepreneurs are in trouble with various state insurance commissions, so you must check that, too. Even if you are in good health and can get a reasonably-priced policy that you never use, the insurance companies will jack up the rates with each renewal (in one editorial to the WSJ, I think, one consumer who never used his insurance wound up switching companies six times in two years over crazy rate increases). Had my husband not landed a job in teaching, I don’t know what we would have done once COBRA ran out. For small business owners, the self-employed and freelancers, health care reform, whatever it might look like, is essential. Insurance, not finding clients, has been the biggest impediment to my business.

I hope all freelancers are participating in the single payer health insurance campaign now going on which would take the matter out of the hands of the insurance companies and the government would assume their role. Everyone would be covered and the coverage would be paid for by your taxes. We would have a national non-profit system something like Canada’s and the rest of the industrialized world.
It is immoral and despicable to make money from sick people as the insurance companies are doing in this country.

This issue is a prime example of the political and social retardation in the the USA. It’s long past time that many more people understood this.

Michaela – can you point us to a link with more information about the single payer health insurance campaign?

My sister is a freelance graphic designer who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999. Six months into treatment, she learned her insurance company – which had been happy to cash her checks – hadn’t paid a penny towards her care, and was in fact arguing that her chemo was a “prescription,” and since her policy didn’t cover prescriptions they wouldn’t pay. Her doctors argued the point (which they’d had to do with the same company before), but the company decided to terminate my sister’s coverage. They’d spent six months trying to find an excuse, and there was a tiny error in her original application, which was filled out by an insurance agent.

She sued, it was thrown out of court. Ten years later, she’s still saddled with medical debt that she is steadily paying off. The experience left her “uninsurable” and she wound up forced to get partial coverage through a state run program (at a cost of over $800/month for just her, with a high deductible, no vision, no dental, and no cancer-related coverage). The kicker? It was through the very company who had canceled her policy!

Michaela is right: the healthcare system in the country is a disgrace thanks to insurance companies and HMOs focusing on profit over health.

I, too, would love to hear more about the single-payer health plan. I’ll have to do an Internet search. I’ve never heard of such a thing.

Unfortunately the single payer option is fairly dead. House Speaker Pelosi & President Obama have for some reason conceded this important point. At this point, the best we can lobby for is a public option in the reform they push forward.

Nan, can you provide more info about NYT story on freelancing?

My challenge has been disability insurance. I have a bare bones policy through Lloyds of London. My broker has tried to find other companies, but the fact that I’m in my office 90% to 95% of the time makes me difficult to cover, apparently, since they can’t be sure I can’t work. If I walked next door and did the exact same thing there, I’d be insurable. Anyone else have this problem, and how did you solve it?

Thanks for your comments, everyone, and I am now trying to synthesize a LOT of health insurance info into one easy place… You can bet it will be posted widely…

Meanwhile, though, I BELIEVE this is the NYT article Nan was referencing: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/magazine/07unemployed-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

Hi, I am working in Life Insurnace company ..just wanna add some extra income to the family can we have some kind of jobs which can be done from the residence anywhere in the world..pls suggest total exp 5 yrs in Life insurance.