Comment by pw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pw | Hacker News Reader

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I guess I count as a “low wage worker” these days and your claims in the first paragraph simply aren’t true for myself or most of the other low wage workers I know.

I deliver for DoorDash and make around $100 dollars a day from about five hours of work. My girlfriend (who’s disabled) rides along with me, so it’s sorta like I’m just getting paid to drive around and hang out. I drive a 2005 Honda Civic, so I spend less than $15/day on gas and the car is old enough the depreciation is minuscule. I buy my health insurance on the exchange. It’s excellent and with the premium subsidy I only pay $22/month. I have several chronic health conditions, so good health insurance (and particularly drug coverage) is really important to me. I’ve been able to get my insurance to cover all of the many medications I’m on (many of still under patent and not generic) and my copay is only $45/month. Visits to my primary care doctor are free and I’ve got a $500 deductible for everything else.

I can work as much or as little as I want on pretty much whatever schedule I choose. I tend to stick to about five hours a day because it doesn’t feel like a ton of work, but it’s enough to cover my expenses and then some. Rent is my only other major expense and I pay just $550 for my one bedroom apartment. I rarely cook at home, but even after spending way too much eating out, I regularly have $500-$1,000 leftover at the end of the month, so I’m certainly not living paycheck to paycheck. Since I save some of that extra money, I can take time off whenever I want (although I rarely do, since I enjoy getting out of the house and working). Sure, if I get sick and don’t work, I don’t make any money, but that’s why I keep a bit of money in savings.

It might be Uber or Lyft or Instacart instead of DoorDash, but I know several people in a similar position to me. And honestly it’s a pretty sweet life. I’ve got all my needs met and then some. I enjoy my work. And I’ve got lots of free time to purpose my intellectual interests like coding.

If tomorrow someone burns a red light and smashes into you and you can’t drive anymore, are doordash going to keep paying you?

Yes, these “jobs” are fine as long as everything goes to plan, but is it really that much to ask to not have to live under the sword of Damocles?

That was my situation. I had a sales job the was primarily commission based and I had health insurance. I had a bad bike accident and got sent to an out of network hospital. I went from a six figure income and no medical bills to almost no income and a six figure medical bill. I was devastated.

Probably the hardest part was how depressed I was, even as my body was recovering, I simply wasn’t prepared to start hustling to get my sales income back up, pay for physical therapy, deal with the hospital & insurance company, etc.

For-profit healthcare should be criminalised. It's hard enough to recover physically from an injury, but adding the need to recover financially from it as well is cruel.

The problem is not for-profit healthcare, but how it is implemented in the US. Lots of countries have for-profit healthcare without the users of that healthcare every worrying about recovering financially.

At the end of the day, it's always "for profit". Either it's the doctors getting paid by the state getting paid by citizens, or the hospital getting paid by the state getting paid by citizens, or the hospitals getting paid by the insurers getting paid by citizens, or very often a combination of the 3.

The issue in the US is the setup, not the fundamental principal

Getting paid for your labor isn't the same as "for profit". Hospitals can get their stuff paid for without there being "profit", and you don't have to expect sick folks to have extra money to pay for middle men.

> Hospitals can get their stuff paid for without there being "profit"

They can, but it's not necessary. There are lots of private hospitals in France and it works just fine

> you don't have to expect sick folks to have extra money to pay for middle men

There are always going to be middlemen. Too few and resources are allocated inefficiently due to a lack of management. Too many and it's a waste of resources. The trick is to find the right balance

"There are always going to be middlemen. Too few and resources are allocated inefficiently due to a lack of management. Too many and it's a waste of resources. The trick is to find the right balance"

Yes, agreed, though I'd argue that middlemen aren't actually needed - as actual middlemen are folks getting paid when they aren't really necessary. It is kind of like car dealerships don't really need to be as they are, but that is part of the service you pay for with cars. Instead, you simply need enough people to get things to work - and sometimes that can be lessened. For example, standardized medical billing and coding in the US would reduce the labor required to deal with insurance - and suddenly, fewer people are needed at the office. Fairly standarized coverage would help as well (fewer misunderstandings) and decoupling it from employment (US based: Would take away HR jobs, but reduce burden on companies).

But the main point really was that sick people, who could easily be missing work to see the doctor, shouldn't be expected to pay for everything.

I imagine most contract delivery workers have considered this and factor it into their decision making. I don't think these positions are meant to be a perfect improvement across the board to traditional starting wage jobs, but it's up to the employee to make the judgement based on their own risk tolerance.

Like many folks here, I worked full-time minimum wage for years before eventually entering the professional world, and I can say given the choice now, I'd absolutely prefer the make-your-own-hours contract model to obligation of a fixed-hour in-person position. Of course there are drawbacks, like the lack of health coverage (though I'm Canadian so I'm not sure how this would work in the states exactly), but given the option, I'd still choose the former.

Speaking strictly to the parent post's case, their car is worth like $4000, so it sounds like they could easily repair or buy a new one.

Sorry I wasn’t clear. I was talking about personal injury, not the car :)

If a car smashed into me and I couldn't code, my company wouldn't pay me either?

Or are you talking about workmen's comp coverage?

> If a car smashed into me and I couldn't code, my company wouldn't pay me either?

Mine would (not a company, a university). For the first two weeks, I'd use accrued Sick Time then switch to their Short-Term Disability that would cover 100% of my pay (for some positions with fewer years of service it would be 75%). Short-Term Disability coverage lasts for six months, beyond that my employer doesn't pay any salary replacement but I pay a few dollars a month for long-term disability insurance that would.

I think the federal Family and Medical Leave Act only guarantees I can return to my job for 12 weeks but Massachusetts increases that to 20 weeks. By policy, my employer won't dismiss someone on Short-Term Disability (26 weeks) and may not beyond that either.

In this case, driving a car is part of his job, so indeed it would be like having an industrial accident - your employer is going to cover you for a work accident

These gig job workers are classified as contractors, not employees (except where a judge or a local law says they must be employees). I don't know how, or if, workers' comp applies to contractors, I suspect it doesn't apply at all.

Indeed, my initial question was rhetorical.

Let me know how your gig economy retirement plan goes. May you never have an accident on job. May you never need healthcare. I don’t see much future in such gig economy jobs. Our grandparents often worked for the same company all their lives. Your gig economy is a one way trap with no exit or promotional path. You have the equivalent of a fancy summer college kid job, but it’s not a career path.

Imagine a world where people were provided free health care, a benefits system, good employee rights and state pensions! Oh wait, it already exists in most of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

Did you read the comment? They have healthcare and said there's $500-$1000 leftover each month, which is a healthy amount for retirement investment. More than enough to max out a Roth IRA. That's on top of social security too.

And you appear to have no dependent, and living in an area where cost of livings are rather low according to your rent cost.

I'm not implying we should all afford a living in San Francisco, but an anecdote that represents the average case would be more relevant. The prospect of having a family with a couple of kids to take care of is quite the norm (still)

Really interesting to hear some insight it from someone who is actually doing it for a change. Not having lived in the US for a while I wasn't aware that insurance was available for this rate with pre-existing conditions. Sounds a lot more reasonable than what i've heard - do you have more information about your insurance plan?

Theirs does sound like a good plan (won't find that in every state) but they're also relatively poor and receiving a large subsidy to cover most of the monthly premium.

What happens if your car gets totaled?

I imagine car insurance would provide a replacement vehicle if that happens

...as long as you don't tell them you were delivering food at the time...

It would be a huge risk not adding business use to your policy and paying the extra premium, especially in the US were people are so litigious

Kelly Blue Book for a 2005 Honda Civic in good condition is $2-3000.

So two to six month's savings. Painful but not career-ending.

Is this a marketing post for these delivery services? Your website says you are a developer working for a startup.

Thanks for providing some factual real-world insight to the topic of US healthcare where most information that bounces around Europeans is along the lines of "yeah, well Americans have higher salaries because healthcare costs are so extreme so everyone without a tech job is living paycheck to paycheck and can easily be bankrupted by illnesses".

Yeah cause we're right about that

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