The reason a lot of Uber drivers don't mind being contractors is because they already have full-time jobs that provide health insurance. But ask drivers who drive during regular business hours (they will be more likely to not have any other job) and they will probably tell you that they would rather be employees.
I guess one other way these things are exclusive is that they drive up costs for sharing economy companies. Some of these companies are pricing so low that they are barely making a profit as it is. If their costs are even higher, they will have to drive up prices, and at least part of their appeal immediately vanishes. At least a few of the companies will die if that happens.
I wish people would realize this is a morally neutral outcome. Like, oh no, another company down the drain. It's not like they're a limited resource. We should be willing to sacrifice a thousand companies if they can't succeed on the profit metric under the rules we've set.
"Sharing economy" type companies are a good idea. They'll succeed, or better ones will. They don't need coddling.
If you want a libertarian paradise where government doesn't interfere, move to Somalia.
This _is_ a very new form of employment that is a mixture of two older forms. There's way too much momentum to kill it. New legislation will be enacted to cover this 3rd type of worker which will please no one except that it'll remove uncertainty so the businesses will support it.
The rate won't differ much from what the driver will be quoted on an ACA exchange if he were to buy it himself (and might actually be worse, because individuals are eligible for subsidies, while companies aren't).
Then you have all sorts of issues of vacation time and coverage meanwhile. If the driver doesn't sign into the network for X amount of days, is he still eligible? Or automatically dropped from employee status and subsequent coverage?
Asking for forgiveness, not permission works sometimes but eventually you do have to deal with the legalities.
Whenever I take an Uber or Lyft these days, I always ask what the drivers think about the issue, and the uniform response so far (obviously this is anecdotal and not at all scientific) is that they like the flexibility of being able to choose when to drive. For many, this is their second job they do on weekends, nights, or early mornings. They are worried that they'll lose this flexible source of income that are helping, for example, save for their children's college education or pay their way through night school.
I'm not saying that this represents the majority view, or that the legal issue should come out any differently, but I do worry that some of these workers, happily employed as contractors, will lose out on this opportunity.