Health Care vs Musicians

I read a very interesting and thought-provoking article in the Jan/Feb issue of SPIN magazine about how America’s health care problems are affecting low-income musicians who were not lucky enough to break through yet. The article, entitled ‘Licensed to Ill’, was written by David Peisner, and it explains an average musician’s situation and what options he/she might have for getting health insurance. I’ll try to pick out some of the information included in the article, so that you have some idea about the connection between health care and musicians.

According to Randy Himes, when a solo artist or a band signs a contract with a major label, they are supposed to be advised about the fact that health insurance is granted for them. The problem is that most of the times, this does not happen. This is understandable, because the labels are just trying to save money during the economic crisis. However, they should not do this on their client’s costs.

By the way, Randy is one of AFTRA’s (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) executive directors, which is a union that provides group policies through a deal with major labels. For my surprise, it turned out that this insurance is for vocalists only. This explains why we can hear each band member performing backing vocals on records nowadays. The article states that AFTRA has recently agreed to cover independent artists health insurance as well. The funny thing about this is that due to high requirements, only 12 people managed to get enrolled in this program so far.

A bigger problem is that the main musicians’ union, the American Federation of Musicians, does not offer any kind of insurance for its members. The article mentions that a Future of Music Coalition poll has found that 44% of musicians are living without any kind of health insurance. This enormous percentage exists because, according to a 2008 government census, 60% of American citizens are insured through their employers; whereas, most full-time musicians are self-employed. This is why AFTRA’s intentions with covering independent artists seem like a move in the right direction; it’s just that the requirements should be modified so that the policy would include a wider range of musicians.

The issue, unfortunately, has many other components as well: people in this recession cannot afford to pay insurance bills; many are denied coverage because of a preexisting condition; etc. There is The Giraffes’ Aaron Lazar, for example, whose story was included in the article. One day, his heart suddenly stopped. He had to have a defibrillator implanted in his chest, which was fortunately paid by New York’s emergency Medicaid law. Although he managed to find an insurance company after that, it would not want to pay the implant change surgery he needed after the battery died. The magazine quoted him explaining what the company said when he called them, as it follows: “They said that I’d be better off living on the street and qualifying for state health insurance as a noncontributing member of society than I would be trying to pay my bills.”

So what other options do our beloved musicians have? They cannot just hope for a public health option to be finally given by the government, and they certainly cannot live on the street like Aaron was advised to do so.

Well, they might get noticed by non-profit groups, such as Sweet Relief or MusiCares, or they can collect money from online donations or benefit concerts. It can easily be that Live Aid would change its beneficiary by the next time it’ll be organized, and Bono won’t be singing to help hungry kids in third world countries, but to help his fellow musicians.

Anyway, this article was very well-written and it really made me think. I advise you to go buy and read it in the 2010 Jan/Feb edition of SPIN magazine.