Nope – I guess I knew that they don’t treat y’all as actual contractors, although I did not know that they didn’t even withold taxes and send 1099′s to authors. That seems odd… But it just seems that since they probably have plans for the folks that work in their offices, that there should be some way to add in people who they pay for the products that allow them to have those offices, ya know?

I guess the bottom line is that the system is broken, has been broken for a long time, and really needs a good butt-whooping. Sigh.

Yes, I am clueless of the SFWA and it’s inner workings. As far as I know they could offer it already but at higher rates than COBRA.

But Mindy, am I to understand that you think publishers treat us as contract employees and/or give us insurance? Because that isn’t the case at all. They don’t even withhold taxes from our payments; we’re responsible for all of it ourselves. I do not know a single author anywhere whose publisher pays for their health insurance.

Our insurance came through my husband’s job, but he left that job to start something else … and the something else does not come with insurance.

We continued that arrangement for our full 18 months of eligibility while we waited for him to get his plan in order. However, during that time we learned my daughter had a heart condition (which she has since outgrown. Yay!) and my wife was pregnant with our son, who was due at any time.

In the end, my employer told me he wasn’t going to create a group plan as long as my family was in it. Our health issues risked out his plan for everyone else and sent his rates through the roof. That left us on our own to find insurance, only no one would have us as my daughter was considered “uninsurable” due to her pre-existing heart condition, and my wife was also similarly so because she was pregnant (apparently also considered to be a pre-existing condition). We were screwed.

At the end of 18 months we switched to COBRA’s absolutely worthless “catastrophic” coverage , which was even more expensive, just so we wouldn’t have a lapse. Thankfully, I was able to leave my little company after two months of that and get on with a much larger company that offered a generous group plan with no preexisting coverage limitations.

I agree with you that the U.S. health care system really sucks. Sure, it could be worse, but that’s no reason to pretend it’s great either. We went through hell for a while, and it took a lot of effort to understand the rules and what my options were so I could advocate for myself and my family. I guess in the end we were some of the lucky ones. At least we are for right now.

Good luck getting yours sorted out.