Re: Insurance options for 1099 gigs

["Larry \"DrFranken\" Bolhuis" <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Another of the oddities of Obamacare was that it made it much harder for 
people to get together to get group insurance.  His successor did issue 
some presidential directive/decree/whatever that made that easier. My 
wife's employer jumped on that and formed an insurance group that was 
specifically targeted at tiny companies including independent 
contractors.  The actual insurance was blue cross and included dental 
and optical options.  As a large group, costs were about 1/3 what the 
ACA could provide. It took off and in just a few months they had 
thousands of small companies signed. Insurance companies in all 49 other 
states inquired about how to do this, and the bosses agreed to form a 
consulting company to teach and assist. Sadly a judge stepped in less 
than a year later and said: "Oh No, you can't have people who do 
different things in the same insurance pool! That's illegal per the 
ACA!" and shut down the entire thing after just one year.  Thing is 
though consider General Motors. At one point in the past a GM President 
said: "I'm not so much administering a car company but an insurance plan 
that happens to make cars."  Then consider that across the entire GM 
enterprise there are people that do thousands of different jobs from 
simple paperwork to heavy welding, hauling, stamping, etc. Likely they 
have as wide a range of jobs as the aforementioned group had. BUT since 
they are 'one company' they are allowed to put all those folks in the 
same policy.  Just shows one way how government makes so little sense.
 - DrF

On 4/20/2023 6:16 PM, Dan wrote:
>   (I suppose this could include W2 contract gigs that don't offer group
> insurance.)
>
> I'm open to considering 1099 gigs, but the thing that always concerns me
> about the hourly rate is knowing how much I need to build into my rate for
> health and disability insurance.  Thanks to ObamaNoCare, my options for
> catastrophic coverage were eliminated.  I've been out of the 1099 space for
> several years now.  Are there groups available one can join to get a group
> rate?  Many moons ago, someone mentioned to me that a local chamber of
> commerce might have such a group.  I looked at our local C.o.C.'s website,
> but it didn't mention anything about group coverage.
>
> - Dan