How Freelance Writers Will Fare After the Repeal of the Affordable Care Act

February 3, 2017

Writer sitting alone at a cafe, using a laptop.

President Donald Trump promised throughout his campaign to repeal former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare plan, which currently insures roughly twenty million people.

But the repeal of the Affordable Care Act will have a disastrous effect on the livelihoods of freelance writers, writes Kristen Evans, who is herself a freelance writer, for Literary Hub.

Given the extant risks associated with a freelancing career, including the absence of a guaranteed and steady income, marginalized writers will “have even bigger walls to scale,” Evans says. “The loss of social safety nets for lower- and middle-class writers of all genders, ethnicities, and backgrounds will increasingly make our industry accessible only to those who have economic and educational clout.”

Novelist Chuck Wendig echoes these concerns on his personal blog. “Not having the ACA shackles you to a job—and it makes keeping that job more important, so it’s harder to leave, which gives that employer more leverage over you.... It helps ensure that the creative class can’t survive either, because we’re out here on the margins, on the frontier of wild space.”

On the first day of his presidency, Trump signed an executive order that directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services and other agencies to interpret existing regulations in a way that would minimize the financial burden on individuals, insurers, and healthcare providers. However, the process for a repeal of the healthcare law is now underway in the House of Representatives.

Related reading: Signature recommends these five books that destigmatize cancer and “open conversations about prevention and treatment while also providing solace to those who have lost loved ones.”

More related reading: At Slate, Jim Newell has provided a list of metaphors that have been used to justify the Affordable Care Act repeal.

 

Image Credit: Hannah Wei/Unsplash.

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