There are about 6.6 million job openings in the United States right now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite these opportunities, however, an increasing number of individuals are moving towards the “gig economy.” 42 million workers are anticipated to be self-employed by 2020. More than 36% of the workforce currently works freelance, latest estimates project. This trend towards an increasingly independent workforce, a workforce not tied to any employer restraints or benefits, presents promising opportunities in industries that need the most innovation.

With the healthcare industry constantly under scrutiny for excessive costs, mismanagement, and poor patient outcomes, this new trend in labor preference may prove to be a promising opportunity for providers to cut costs. The United States currently faces a dramatic shortages of healthcare workers from the home care level to the operating room, and the country is currently on track to face a shortage of between 40,000 to 104,000 physicians by 2030.

By connecting the gig economy to the healthcare industry, the result appears to be win-win. Workers have more flexibility, can negotiate their own contracts, and can select opportunities most appealing to them. Employers, like hospitals, can dramatically reduce costs and more nimbly respond to varying demand. In an industry that is the poster-child for egregious costs, treating health aids and doctors like Uber drivers starts to look appealing for the bottom line, particularly when labor accounts for 60% of spending.

Before we quickly begin allocating freelance workers into the healthcare (or any other) industry, we must consider the broader implications of incentivizing such volatile jobs. The irony of suggesting that freelancers, members of the gig economy, enter the healthcare workforce is that one central tenant of working project-to-project, operation-to-operation, is that employers do not offer healthcare benefits to these temporary workers. As Reuters points out, freelancers’ income is constantly in flux, making coverage options ever-changing as well. This makes finding health insurance a particularly perplexing problem. “If you are a freelancer facing the pure retail cost of healthcare, then it is horrifying,” notes Kathy Hempstead, senior advisor of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

This dilemma affects more than just freelancers, however. Without a critical mass of individuals insured through traditional insurance plans, we may face a new problem of not having enough enrolled individuals to pool risk, making our health insurance program obsolete. While programs like the Affordable Care Act has attempted to address this growing problem, legislation is too slow and resistance too large to address the evolving problem’s rapid growth.

While we should be finding ways to innovate the labor market as we innovate industry, we must also be futurists, considering not merely the short-term benefits of our actions, but also long-term implications. The main problem with this employment shift may be, like so many others, not the evolution itself, but the rate at which it is occurring.