Freelancers are in line for a healthcare upgrade. But will they sign up?

Here’s a question you don’t expect to see when you’re filling out a medical form: “Do you have an accountant?”

It is one you will find, however, at the Freelancers Union’s Brooklyn primary care centre. It’s not like most doctors’ offices. It has the spare, blonde-wood appeal of an Ikea catalogue. There are couches you can sink into, rather than hard chairs you perch on. Instead of magazines, four glossy iPads invite clients to browse the internet, over free Wi-Fi. A yoga room beckons with sea-foam-green yoga mats and tiny handweights in baby pink and baby blue – perfect for meditating or stretching even with the street noise outside.

Here’s the catch: it’s only for freelancers.

The Freelancers Union, a trade group for the members of the gig economy, has just signed a partnership with Empire BlueCross BlueShield to provide affordable health insurance to its 130,000 members in New York. The plan’s new services include easier paperwork and access to its serene primary care centres, which don’t charge co-pays. The union will also oversee all billing and enrolment and provide advocacy and checkups that prescribe a tax-prep class or tai chi and yoga to reduce stress from finances.

The big selling point, however, is lower premiums. The Freelancers Union already had an insurance plan in place, but due to the Affordable Care Act, which restricts insurers from limiting membership to certain groups, the plan’s premiums would be 14% higher than the Empire deal.

Under the new deal between the union and Empire, seven out of nine of the available plans will see a reduction in premiums, ranging from 1% to 19% in monthly costs. The premiums for the plan will range from $198 a month for the most basic plan to $658 a month for the platinum plan. Members of the union will be on the Empire plan as of January 2015.

The new Empire deal is not just a health plan; it’s also a membership drive of sorts. There are 53 million freelancers in the US, only 250,000 of whom are Freelancers Union members. By 2020, this “independent” workforce is expected to be as much as 70 million people.

“These jobs are what I call ‘permorary’,” Phil Press, executive vice-president at Temporary Alternatives, told the Guardian earlier this year, using a variation on the often-derisive “permalancer” moniker.

“People think that temping is a quick fix, but it’s not,” he said. “Not any more.”

The rise of the part-time workers is in fact an economic fall for many people. Temp workers can stay at assignments for months, even a year. The firms, which are protected from having to pay unemployment, taxes or benefits, prefer this kind of a workforce because it requires low or no benefits and little commitment.

The Freelancers Union has gone the activist route to draw new members, calling its collective power “a quiet revolution”.

“I believe that isolated individuals can’t go it alone. Our democracy always works best when you have a civic infrastructure,” says Sara Horowitz, the union’s founder and executive director.

Healthcare, the thinking goes, may bring freelancers together in a way that other issues can’t. The union’s perks, like the free paperwork, are designed to keep members in the fold and attract new freelancers to sign up as members.

“Because we work with freelancers, we can see what the future is going to be like,” says Horowitz. “We think the next crisis is going to be [healthcare].”

The union said it might sign similar partnerships in other states. The union has two primary care facilities in New York and is looking to open 15 more in cities like Philadelphia, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Now the freelancers just need to sign up.