10/05/2024
🏥 Understanding Health Care for Freelancers
🔻 Why would I want to provide health care for freelancers? You might think that avoiding health insurance or health coverage is one of the benefits of working with freelance talent, but the truth is that there are a lot of really legitimate reasons why it makes sense to add this to your freelance contract.
Here are a few of our favorites:
🔹 Turn your top freelance talents to fans: Fiverr reported that 40% of freelancers cite medical coverage and health-related fears as their biggest issue, compared to just 55% of the general population. With so much competition to get top-tier contractors, health coverage is a serious perk that could get skilled freelancers to stick by your company with more commitment than you might expect from an ad-hoc worker.
🔹 Ensuring health and wellbeing: Ethically speaking, you might feel better about providing health coverage for all staff, no matter the official type of worker. After all, according to 2019 numbers, 17% of freelancers don't have any health coverage at all, and 40% rely on Medicare and Medicaid. A further 21% rely on their parents or spouse.
Even on a practical level, if your freelancers are sick and can't get access to the medical help they need, this can have a knock-on impact on your own business continuity.
🔹 Reducing premiums: When you're discussing health care options with your insurance provider, you might find that increasing the number of workers that you cover, or covering a larger subset of younger employees could reduce the premiums for the business and the employees, too. In a small business, covering freelancers might even allow you to qualify for group medical coverage in the first place.
