How Freelancers Can Benefit From Health Care Reform

By Erinn Springer

It is the six-month anniversary of health care reform and major provisions from reform are changing plans today. These new provisions strengthen consumer protections and provide additional health benefits to consumers.

Freelancer Health Benefits

As a group, freelancers stand to benefit from these provisions because individual policies must adhere to all of the following changes immediately.
Health care reform changes to individual health insurance plans include:

• Free preventive care. Consumers will be able to use preventive services at no additional cost to them.

• Guaranteed coverage for children with medical conditions. Children will be guaranteed coverage regardless of their health status. Consumers can get affordable health insurance policies to cover the whole family.

• Extended coverage for young adults. Children will be able to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until they turn 26. It is typically more affordable to add a child to a policy rather then purchase an individual policy for that child.

• Lifetime and annual limits on health insurance coverage are eliminated from plans. Consumers will no longer have certain limits on their health insurance policies that leave them with hefty medical bills.

• New processes to appeal health insurers’ decisions or denials. Reform establishes new rights for consumers to appeal decisions made by health insurers and can request an external review process to challenge decisions.

Compare & Save

Freelancers can compare their current policies to new plans online instantly. It is easy to compare health insurance quotes and view different benefits.

Consumers are always encouraged to speak with a health insurance agent about their plans to see if a new plan would benefit their health care needs and budget.

Author Information

Erinn Springer is a freelancer who writes about health insurance topics for a health insurance quotes provider.

See Also — U.S. News: 8 Immediate Cost Benefits of Health Care Reform

Fee Simple: What Should You Charge?

If you are a freelance writer, then you know that the rates you charge your customers will go a long way toward determining whether you can make enough money to survive in this business or go out of business.

Yet, getting a good rate for your work can be difficult, especially in these challenging economic times where the competition for work is stiff and the opportunities limited, at least the good paying ones.

I don’t have a magic number when it comes to what you should charge as every project or assignment can be so very different. Back in the day when print writing ruled, you could charge $1 per word for a magazine feature article. What most people don’t tell you is that those jobs were given to writers whose bylines were well known to the publishing community.

Most of us wouldn’t be able to win these lucrative titles on a regular basis, but we might win one occasionally. The most likely scenario has us writing for those regional publications paying 25-30 cents per word, but even those opportunities seem fairly scarce lately.

So, how can you survive during these tough times? And, is it possible to charge enough to make a living without working 60 or 70 hours per week?

I can only offer advice based on what works for me. I realize my writing path isn’t the way you may want to go, but it should serve as a model from which you can build your portfolio:

Write For Yourself — I maintain several blogs, each of which focuses on areas highlighting my writing expertise. I write about the automotive industry, aviation, college/career, consumer issues and business primarily.  Though you don’t need to maintain multiple sites, having a place where you can demonstrate to clients your writing prowess is as important as maintaining a clip file. A blog can do that for you.

Score Big — Welcoming one or two high-paying clients beats having six or seven moderate paying clients. Then again, never have all of your eggs in one basket — eventually that basket may be turned over and with it will go your only source of income.  In any case a big client can be a tremendous motivator, just the psychological you need to advance your career.

Tier Your Clients — This point may sound contradictory to what I already said, but there isn’t anything wrong with having various tiers of clients. What I mean is this: go for a few big jobs, those paying at a minimum 25 cents per word, but preferably 50 cents or higher. If you could snag five or six of these each month, then you wouldn’t need to do anything else. Trouble is, you probably won’t therefore go after those people who pay by the article–$25 to $50 per pop–and make these gigs your primary sources of income. And, if you can stand them use some content mill work to fill the gaps. But don’t write content stuff if the pay is below $10 per article and you actually have to do some research!

These three approaches have worked for me. Admittedly, I’m not getting as many big gigs as I would like, but I do have two steady print journals who offer decent pay. Most of my work is from the middle of the road clients with, you guessed it, some content mill work thrown in.

See Also — Will You Be Reaching Higher In 2010?

Photo Credit: excl-zoo