Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[bacon at twinight.org (Jeff Bacon)]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 11:00:58PM -0500, Michael D. Thomas wrote:
> 
> >So, all you individual contractors out there -- why not join up with a
> partner
> >or two?
> 
> Great idea!
> 
> How hard would this be to set up here?
> 
> Could a corporation/LLP whatever be set up for the main purpose of 
> qualifying
> it's members better health coverage, without loss of independence for the
> contractors? Do we need something like MediaAlliance here, or would it be
> redundant?

No, not if it were formed strictly for that purpose and the only
money flowing through it was the health insurance premiums. The
health insurance companies reserve the right to verify that
the subscribing entity is a "bona-fide" business and that the
group members are for all intents and purposes employees
of the corporate entity in question and therefore a "group".

You can get around it (NASE, MediaAlliance, IEEE) but it's not
trivially easy; you'd have to do some real negotiating with the
insurance company in question to define what the group is and 
keep it from being a free-for-all (which is what you want and
what the ins cos do not want) and get it to be large enough
that it's profitable for the ins co.

It'd be enough to simply have the corporate entity do all the
billing for all the independents and have the cash flow
through the company, though; that's all the health ins co is
really looking for. (Everyone's otherwise responsible
for their own expenses and marketing and such, and only gets out
in salary what they pay in minus taxes/expenses; the corporation
has no assets to speak of and does nothing for them besides hold
the insurance policies and push the cash around, and makes $1 in
profit every year.) Basically, what I think is going on here is
that the entity has to meet the IRS guidelines for a bona-fide
business and falls under the HIPAA definitions of a group, which
forces the ins cos to treat it as a group whether they like it
or not. I know people who do this, it's perfectly legal and works
fine, and it's really not a bad idea at all - esp since it also means
you also get the (admittedly limited) liability protection of
the corporate entity and could also get a corp liability policy
to cover everyone and all that.

-bacon
>From kurt at kurtschlatzer.com  Wed Feb 26 10:29:49 2003
From: kurt at kurtschlatzer.com (Kurt Schlatzer)
Date: Wed Feb 26 10:28:39 2003
Subject: [internetworkers] Short-term Cold Fusion opportunities
Message-ID: <31042C6F640AD411ABC000C00D0172830124BAA9 AT Avalon.ies.ncsu.edu>

If anyone is interested in a couple short-term contract projects
involving Cold Fusion, the Industrial Extension Service at NC State
would like to hear from you.

Call or email Keith Boswell:
919.515.5430
keith_boswell AT ncsu.edu

Tell him I referred you.
Kurt Schlatzer