Health Plans For Freelance Contractors

Time's Joe Klein says that he bought health insurance on his own. "Sorry, but I did, during two extended and pretty painful periods--as a free-lancer in the early 1980s and as a New Yorker staff writer--yes, the venerable old mag doesn't bestow health insurance on its writers--in the 1990s. It was ridiculously expensive, with limited coverage--group plans like Time-Warner's have a lot more benefits--and a mind-numbing, ultra-skeptical bureaucracy."

So is there a special health plan for 'freelancers'? I mean, there should be. There's a health plan tailor made to con just about everything and everyone. Here you go:

1. Flexible health freelance - What is it?
2. Health insurance coverage options for contractors
3. The necessity of health insurance for freelancers and the self-employed
4. Health insurance for freelancers

And here's what Medicaid has to say about freelancers in the media:

"Representative of the news media means a person actively gathering information for an entity organized and operated to publish or broadcast news to the public. News media entities include television and radio broadcasters. publishers of periodicals who distribute their products to the general public or who make their products available for purchase or subscription by the general public, and entities that may disseminate news through other media (e.g.. electronic dissemination of text). We will treat freelance journalists as representatives of a new media entity if they can show a likelihood of publication through such an entity. A publication contract is such a basis, and the requester's past publication record may show such a basis..."

So....Let's say you want to be treated as a journalist rather than a freelancer. You know what to do, right? Cough up a couple of past contract agreements, get letters from a few prospective publishers and you're no longer an outcast freelancer. You're a new-media journalist.