Seasonal and Part-Time Workers Need a Different Healthcare Path, Says John Zabasky
Updated: 4 days ago
Part-time and seasonal workers face a healthcare problem that most insurance plans were never built to fix. Traditional group plans assume a stable, full-time workforce that stays with one employer long enough to hit eligibility windows and pay steady premiums. Agriculture crews, janitorial staff, seasonal retail workers, and gig-adjacent employees rarely fit that pattern. Their hours change by the week. Their employment can end before a waiting period is even over.
The result is a large group of working people who technically have access to insurance in theory but almost never in practice. They are told a plan exists. They are rarely in a position to use it.
John Zabasky is CEO of WorXsiteHR Insurance Solutions, Inc., the exclusive third-party administrator for the HealthWorX Plan. HealthWorX is a no-cost medical plan, subsidized by a non-profit, built specifically to give lower-income, part-time, and seasonal workers access to healthcare they can actually use. That focus makes Zabasky a useful voice on why this particular slice of the workforce keeps falling through the gaps.
Why eligibility rules quietly exclude people
Most employer plans set eligibility around hours worked per week, averaged over a set period. That math works fine for someone on a fixed 40-hour schedule. It breaks down for a farmworker who does 45 hours during harvest and 10 the rest of the month, or a janitorial worker who is added and dropped from a client contract several times a year.
Zabasky points out that the problem is not that these workers are uninsurable. It is that the plan design assumes a kind of stability their jobs don't have. A worker can be perfectly healthy, employed, and earning wages, and still never cross the threshold that would let them enroll.
What this looks like in practice:
A seasonal worker starts a new eligibility clock every time hours dip below the required average
A part-time employee splits time across two employers, and neither one counts enough hours alone
A worker becomes eligible in month three of a four-month contract, right before the job ends
The cost problem sits on top of the access problem
Even where eligibility isn't the barrier, cost usually is. A lower-wage worker asked to pay even a modest premium share, plus a deductible before care kicks in, will often skip coverage entirely. Not because they don't want it. Because the math doesn't work on their paycheck.
Zabasky's view is that a plan only counts as coverage if a worker can use it without a financial calculation standing in the way. A no-cost model removes that calculation. There is no premium to weigh against groceries or rent, so the decision to enroll and use it stops being a trade-off.
What employers should actually check
For employers weighing options for a part-time or seasonal workforce, a few questions do more work than reading a benefits brochure.
Does the eligibility formula match the actual work pattern? Ask for the plan's eligibility rules in plain numbers, not just "look-back period" language. Find out what happens to a worker whose hours swing from week to week. If the answer is that they lose and regain eligibility repeatedly, that plan was not built for this workforce.
What does a worker pay at the point of care? Premium cost is only half the question. Ask what a worker pays out of pocket for a basic visit, a prescription, or an urgent care trip. If the answer involves a deductible that has to be met first, many workers in this income range will functionally have no coverage at all, even while technically enrolled.
How fast can someone actually see a provider? A plan that takes weeks to activate, or that has a thin local provider network, adds friction that seasonal workers don't have time to absorb. Zabasky's experience with the HealthWorX Plan points to speed and provider access as the difference between a plan that gets used and one that sits unused in an enrollment folder.
A step employers tend to skip
Employers often stop at asking whether a plan is offered to part-time staff, without asking whether it is actually reachable by that staff. Those are different questions. A plan can technically extend to seasonal workers on paper and still exclude nearly all of them in practice, once eligibility math, premium cost, and provider access are added up together.
The fix is not complicated. It means running the eligibility formula against real schedules before choosing a plan, not after. It means asking a provider directly what a worker pays at the point of care, in dollars, not percentages. And it means checking whether the network actually covers where seasonal and part-time workers live and work, not just where the employer's office is.
None of this requires a bigger budget. It requires asking sharper questions before signing, rather than assuming a plan built for full-time staff will bend to fit everyone else.
