Craziest one of all, my new neighbor is a ER doctor and he’s self employed and wait for it ...
He doesn’t even get health care from the hospital he works for, he’s self insured !
My understanding of the governments description of an employee is, if the employer tells them when, where and how to work, they are an employee.
Not familiar with ER doctors, but many doctors in hospitals are “independent”. Clue of that is you get multiple bills from the various doctors after your hospital visit (ER or inpatient).
I’m not sure it’s the hospital or the doctors prefer it that way.
I worked as an “independent” much of my career (software engineer), because it’s financially advantageous that way. Back in the days of the “dot-com” craze, us “independents” got paid a good 80-100% premium!
So yes, I have to arrange my own health insurance, my own disability insurance (which I didn’t for some years until an accident of a friend woke me up to add that), pay my own ss/medicare tax. And obviously no paid vacation! All those benefits employees take for granted cost me about 25-30% of my “billing rate”. But since I got such a high pay premium as an “independent”, I’m still way ahead in my take home pay!
The pay premium was largely view as the “insecurity premium” as I can be told not to come to work the next day with not advance notice. There’s no such thing as severance. But after the financial meltdown of 2007, “independent premium” had dropped to less than 50%. i.e. only breaking even, with no security. So I gave my employer a choice to hire me as an employee, or I go looking for a similar employee position at his competitors. My boss pulled some strings to turned me into an employee.
Granted, ski industry workers don’t quite have the same bargaining power. But your ER doctor? I think he does. So if he works as an independent, it maybe because he prefers it.
Probably apples and oranges lumping doctors with ski lift operators.
