Health Insurance for Landscapers and Lawn Care Workers in Florida

Your route, your crew, or someone else's truck

Some people own a small lawn company with a few helpers. Some work for a bigger company as employees. Others cut on their own and are paid by the yard, sometimes for a company that treats them as contractors. Employees may be offered a plan, sometimes after a waiting period. Someone running a route alone, or paid on a 1099, often has none, and a spouse's job with a plan is one more thing to look at.

Heat, blades and long days outside

Hours in the sun, heavy equipment, engines and blades add up. Noise is hard on the ears, and cuts, strains and falls happen. If you handle fertilizer or sprays, read the labels and tell your doctor what you use.

Health insurance does not make the work safer. It is there for the clinic visit, the urgent care trip and the hospital stay. Ask which urgent care centers and specialists are in the network near the neighborhoods where you work.

A health plan is not workers' compensation

Workers' compensation is the system meant for injuries on the job, and it works separately from a health plan. A health plan may not pay for an injury that workers' compensation should cover, so check the plan's exclusions. If you work for yourself or have a workers' compensation exemption, you may have no workers' comp for your own injuries. Ask whether a health plan excludes work-related injuries. The question matters on a lawn crew, where a slipped blade, a fall off a trailer or a strained back can happen on any ordinary day, and it is worth asking before you need the answer.

Rain, storms and the slow winter

Lawn work follows the weather. Days of rain can stop a route, and growth slows in some parts of the year. After a hurricane there can be a flood of cleanup calls and then a lull. The plan payment does not follow the weather. For the vocabulary of deductibles and copays, use the guide linked below, then ask yourself what share of a bill you could cover in a lean month.

If you have a crew

Your own plan and a plan for the people who work for you are different projects. For helpers on payroll, ask us about employer-sponsored plans for your business. We can cover your plan on the same call.

How the plan works, and where it may not fit

In a PPO (preferred provider organization) plan, staying with the doctors and hospitals in the network usually costs less, and the plan's own rules say what it pays outside. The plans we offer are private plans, not ACA Marketplace plans, and they have exclusions and limitations. An advisor explains the details.

If you run your own mowing route, or work on someone else's crew, and you are under 65, a private plan can be applied for at any time of year, even in a slow stretch. Plans may not cover every benefit, so have your advisor walk you through the terms first. If a private plan is not for you, we will say so.

Taxes: a general note

Your mower, trailer and fuel sit on the business side, under their own rules. Whether the cost of your own health plan can be deducted is a separate question. The IRS has a self-employed health insurance deduction, figured on Form 7206 and reported on Schedule 1 of Form 1040. This is general information, not tax advice, so talk with a tax professional about your situation.