The population the Artists Foundation serves, working artists in all
disciplines, is a key test population for Massachusetts health care reform law. If a system can be created that is affordable and accessible for this population and their unique needs, the system will be as close to foolproof as it can possibly be. Our industry/market has several important characteristics:
1) The vast majorities of living/contemporary artists of all disciplines — with the exception of the very few who have become “stars” — cannot and do not earn a living from their work as artists and must supplement their income with jobs that may or may not be related to their artistic discipline.
2) Artists spend a significant amount of their gross income on their art making. These are not optional expenses. The largest subsidy to the arts in this country does not come from the government or the private sector, but from artists subsidizing their art making with their unpaid labor, underpaid labor and from their own income (earned and credit cards). So, assessing an artist’s gross
income before taxes in not a fair method to judge their income by. The same holds true for the self-employed. What they earn after taxes (adjusted gross income) is probably the fairest method to use.
3) Many artists do not hold one 9-5 job, but rather have combination sources for their income (multiple part-time jobs, jobs that are semester based and not yearly based, freelance income, contract jobs, self employed income, seasonal jobs, temporary jobs, very sporadic grants, etc.). Artists’ incomes fluctuate from year to year, and from month to month. This fluctuation makes it hard
to determine if artists are eligible for free care or the sliding scale fee-based systems used by health care providers in the Commonwealth.
It will be important to keep these issues in mind when creating a system to process people who do not have regular pay stubs and/or those who are self-employed. Here are some suggestions:
1) The Connector and those enrolling people into the health care reform options, may want to create a specific form or process for residents who have multiple sources of fluctuating income, those who do not have regular pays stubs, and/or for those who are self-employed.
2) The Connector and health care advocates might want to create specific outreach materials and web based information for these populations.
3) The Connector will need to specifically target businesses/industries that employ these types of workers. The Insurance Partnership is a model that works well with the self-employed and small businesses and might be good to replicate.
I am quite confident that these concerns will be addressed effectively. After all, artists create things that never existed on a regular basis and public policy makers do the same. The Artists Foundation is ready to co-found a working group to address these issues!
Kathleen Bitetti
Artist
Executive Director of the Artists Foundation
executivedirector@artistsfoundation.org
Related web sites:
click here for more information about the Artists Foundation
click here for more information about health care for artists
Dear Kathleen, I looked up your group and tried to call you days ago after your first post on this useful blog. We’re all busy people, esepecially those with small kids and multiple jobs–and that’s many of us. With no luck getting you directly I’ll communicate here.
Your good intenetions are commendable but why on earth would you want artists required to constantly submit paperwork upon paperwork to “qualify” for some inadequate/not fully comprehensive and truly affordable commercial insurance product??
The private insurance industry has shown us that they are locked in to using many ways to hide, and to “share” costs, with and endless and confusing array of “choices” consisting of expensive co-pays, deductables and co-insurance, all on top of monthly premiums!!!
Please see your way to a better way to enact meaningful reforms. We do have other options!! To create a humane, affordable and cost-effective approach to guaranteeing (not mandating) quality affordable care and coverage for all we must insist on a social insurance model. The insurance industry exists to make a profit and creates a bloated and wasteful bureaucracy that is a barrier between people and needed care and between people’s money and effiecient expenditure of that money of health care services.
Instead of this current Chapter 58 law’s needlessly complex and confusing and expensive Connector contraption approach, why not insist on something MUCH MORE SENSIBLE and have everyone covered by the plan that legislators, our governor and other elected officials use?
Taxes are paid in and coverage is granted. Pretty simple and much less expensive and time-consuming, wouldn’t you agree? Maybe the state could explore contracting with our non-profit BCBS to administer these funds.
Why don’t ordinary people, artists and others, deserve the health insurance coverage and security that comes with it, that we taxpayers pay for for elected officials who are there to serve our ordinary person interests? Let’s not make this reform more complicated than it has to be.
The main reasons that the Chapter 58 reform law is so complicated and costly now are there to serve the private insurance industry’s interests. People’s interests and needs–both our health and economic interests–have been pushed into the back seat. This is as shameful as it is tragic.
What’s the logic of advocating, as you seem to be here, for reams of paperwork that’s a distracting hassle to do–and expensive to process–to determine how much an artist would pay in any given month?
Let’s insist on something much better. Let’s insist on health reform that puts ordinary people’s needs before those of the profit-driven insruance industry. Let’s insist on a serious public discussion, led by legislators, of the Massachusetts Health Care Trust legislation.
This refom bill has been introduced repeatedly and has been attacked repeatedly by the insruance industry before ever getting a serious examination.
Details on the Health Care Trust bill and info for MassCare coalition’s Sat. March 24, 2-5pm educational event in Cambridge can be found at http://www.masscare.org/massachusetts-health-care-trust/
I’ll close with these thoughts: Why are so many Americans willing to settle for such poor value in a reformed health care system? Canada and France have systems that pay about $273 per person a month for FULL COMPREHENSIVE coverage without all the paperwork hassle and expense, and they rank much higher than the United State’s dismal global rank of 37th in health status and cost effectiveness of our system.
Google searches on OECD and World Health Oganization for health systems cost and quality will provide specific data.
I invite any and all artists or other people, especially members of the Aritsts Foundation and its board, to contact me directly about my above comment if you have concerns or would like to discuss my comment further. If you are upset or perhaps you’d like to get involved in fundamental health system reform–reform that puts people before profit I sincerely hope that you will be in touch.
My email is ann@defendhealth.org and our tel# at the Alliance to Defend Health Care is 617-541-3300. Thank you.