Hey there. I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. First, as a freelancer it is generally up to that person to obtain insurance on their own. Naturally there are some downsides to this, but also greater flexibility in finding/selecting an insurance provider I would want (In the U.S., for example, not all doctors take all insurance companies. I've known many people who had to leave their family doctor and find someone else simply because their company switch insurance carriers...needless to say insurance in the U.S. is a headache). However, paying for insurance isn't fully out of pocket as a freelancer. There are tax reductions associated with this. Question 2 is really where the meat is though. You see, I wouldn't become fully employed if the law went into effect (or if I had moved to California). I would have been fully un-employed. I would have lost all of my contracts. Basically 15-years of contact building fully flushed down the drain. That's where my dread comes from. Not the switch of freelance to full-time employed, but from freelance to zero income. Take Sports Illustrated, as an example. Based out of California, the company primarily relied on hundreds of freelance writers who would cover specific sports teams. When the law in California went into effect Sports Illustrated didn't want to suddenly pay social security and other benefits on hundreds of freelancers. So it hired on just a few full-time writers, and everyone else instantly lost that income.

Hopefully some of that makes at least a little sense.