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Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#81
post #10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a stand against who? The politicians are empowered by regular Americans who support them. Your neighbors and friends.

"Taking a stand", in the sense used here, refers to taking action to effect change. Call up your neighbors and tell them who to vote for. Tell all your friends who you are voting for, and why. Excusing this as some kind of structural problem with "political paralysis" sounds, to me, like you're a nominal republican who hates republican policies but is reaching for an excuse to avoid hanging out with dirty hippies and…

That’s crazy talk. Of course I want things to be better, but I’m not going to shove my politics into my neighbor’s face. Like most people, I believe strongly but privately. Not an activist.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#82
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Deregulate the health insurance market so you can sell across state lines. 2. Employers start giving their employees the money they pay on their behalf. 3. People shop for the health insurance they want/need. In a year, every other advertisement on TV would be for health insurance, like it is with car insurance now.

> 1. Deregulate the health insurance market so you can sell across state lines. Why can't health insurance companies sell across state lines right now?

A bit of googling leads to:

> Insurance firms in each state are protected from interstate competition by the federal McCarran-Ferguson Act (1945)

Basically this is Congress using its interstate commerce power, in this case to prohibit certain types of commerce.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#83
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your logic craigslist sellers are employees of craigslist. What is craigslist but a network of buyers and sellers?

Craigslist sellers decide on the price, how to exchange goods and money, etc. Uber and Lyft are not free marketplaces where drivers can offer a ride for a price they believe to be fair for their services - the platform owners decide the prices and the drivers are forced to accept that rate in order to get rides.

But the drivers have the option to use another platform to get rides; they're not forced to stay on Uber only. They may also choose their own hours, Uber does not dictate when they must turn their apps on.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#84
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Deregulate the health insurance market so you can sell across state lines. Why can't health insurance companies sell across state lines right now?

> Why can't health insurance companies sell across state lines right now? Every state has unique requirements and Congress has never superseded them with a national health law.

1) Every state also has unique requirements for car insurance.

2) Federal law has in fact controlled many aspects of health insurance plans, particularly employer-sponsored health plans, for decades. The elephant in the room is ERISA, passed 1974, but of course there's also Obamacare.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#85
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are “they”? And why should we trust them?

Here is one source: https://www.factcheck.org/2017/07/selling-insurance-across-s... Why should we trust them vs a random HN commenter?

Many fact checking sites are actually heavily opinionated. To the point where even demonstrably true facts are labeled as "half-true" due to opinionated objections. Frequently, the veneer of calling oneself a "fact-checking" site lets them get away with some pretty significant bending of the truth.

It looks like this article isn't much different. It doesn't actually refute the claim that less regulation would result in lower healthcare premiums:

> In states with unregulated markets, “you could create a situation where you are selling very low-priced policies to healthy people without much [insurance] protection whatsoever,” Blumberg, who was a health policy adviser to President Bill Clinton’s administration, said in a phone interview. “But that ignores the fact that … what you’re doing is driving up the premiums to impossible levels” in states that want to have insurance regulations.

So removal of regulations would actually make healthcare premiums cheaper in the de-regulated areas. Potentially this makes the insurance more expensive in places that do have regulations, but it's actually agreeing with the claim that deregulation can make insurance cheaper.

> It’s a “risk-segmentation strategy,” she said, where eventually the healthy people are pulled into one set of plans and those with health problems are left in another. Premiums would go up so much in states with regulated plans that it would become impossible for them to sustain those regulations.

> Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said that the lion’s share of a premium is the money a plan has to pay for medical claims, as well as utilization. Selling insurance across state lines wouldn’t change the price of medical services — as Antos said — but if insurance companies could deny coverage or charge more for health conditions, a carrier could “push down on utilization by screening out sick people” and then, “they can charge a lower premium.”

Again, the article does admit that premiums would likely go down with less regulation.

It looks like your article isn't actually disproving the claim that insurance premiums would go down with less regulation. In fact it repeatedly does say that premiums would indeed go down, but that it would result in other changes like different coverage from what people are used to, and potentially making it harder for unhealthy people to get insurance.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#86
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Deregulate the health insurance market so you can sell across state lines. 2. Employers start giving their employees the money they pay on their behalf. 3. People shop for the health insurance they want/need. In a year, every other advertisement on TV would be for health insurance, like it is with car insurance now.

It's already legal in several states, but no insurance companies took them up on it. Trump additionally signed an executive order to setup a national way to do it, but it died off as a policy proposal because the insurance companies aren't interested http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/out-of-state-health-insu...

Of course they aren’t interested—the default model is working for them right now.

Take away the default model, and open pure competition, and the insurance companies will have to compete on that level, and things will relatively quickly get better.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is one source: https://www.factcheck.org/2017/07/selling-insurance-across-s... Why should we trust them vs a random HN commenter?

Many fact checking sites are actually heavily opinionated. To the point where even demonstrably true facts are labeled as "half-true" due to opinionated objections. Frequently, the veneer of calling oneself a "fact-checking" site lets them get away with some pretty significant bending of the truth. It looks like this article isn't much different. It doesn't actually refute the claim that less regulation would result…

I agree that everyone is biased. But there has just been an incredible amount of debate on this issue. For OP to state that he's discovered the solution is a bit disingenuous.

Here's another source. There really is a lot: https://www.naic.org/documents/topics_interstate_sales_myths...

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#88
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one said anything about superseding every state law, just those regarding health care.

Friendly reminder that our 10th Amendment rights exist specifically to limit federal power, and to give states superceding power over the federal government. The opposite doesn't actually exist.

Except for Article 1 section 8. If it can be used to prevent a farmer from growing crops to feed his own animals, then it can be used to regulate insurance sales across state lines.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#89
post #23

It’s sad that the idea of people being able to get by and live a comfortable life without the benefits from a full time job is so far outside the Overton window that it’s not even mentioned in these conversations. That seems like such an obviously better outcome for everyone - what if we got rid of healthcare benefits and other types of favorable tax treatment that are tied to full time employment so that everyone is…

1. Deregulate the health insurance market so you can sell across state lines. 2. Employers start giving their employees the money they pay on their behalf. 3. People shop for the health insurance they want/need. In a year, every other advertisement on TV would be for health insurance, like it is with car insurance now.

You're #1 states two things as if they are the same. Your final statement seems to imply that the affordability of auto insurance derives from the above conditions. Except you make one glaring mistake: auto insurance is not regulated. Rather, the rates that insurers can charge is highly regulated.

#3 also doesn't make sense because people don't buy the auto insurance that they want. They buy the insurance that the state requires them to pay, and maybe a little more if they want something better. But the government mandates a minimum level of coverage which the insurance companies need to avoid either going insolvent or charging much higher rates than they do.

Re: Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

#90
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already legal in several states, but no insurance companies took them up on it. Trump additionally signed an executive order to setup a national way to do it, but it died off as a policy proposal because the insurance companies aren't interested http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/out-of-state-health-insu...

Of course they aren’t interested—the default model is working for them right now. Take away the default model, and open pure competition, and the insurance companies will have to compete on that level, and things will relatively quickly get better.

You're acting like every insurance company isn't already a massive multi-state corporation.

State Farm Texas competing with State Farm Kansas is surely going to solve all our problems.

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