Health Insurance for Artists

Every Artist Insured: Understanding Health Care Reform

This 90-minute workshop will discuss the federal health care reform law, what it might mean for you, and health care resources and insurance in the Dallas area. The event is organized by Artists Health Insurance Resource Center, which was founded in 1998 with start up costs funded by an NEA grant. Details:

When: Tuesday, May 17 , 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Where: The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, 3120 McKinney Ave, Dallas, TX 75204. Limited parking available at the MAC as well as on Oak Grove and at City Vet.

The event is free.

To reserve a seat, RSVP to: cmoon@actorsfund.org.

Best Nations to Live In

. . . per a study based on "Education, Health, Quality of Life, Economic Dynamism and Political Environment." The U.S. ranks 11th, after Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, Luxembourg, Norway, Canada, Netherlands, Japan, and Denmark.

Cool interactive graphic at Newsweek.

71-Year-Old in Wheelchair Robs Bank

Peter Barry Lawrence . . . . made his getaway in his wheelchair, with $2,000 in cash on his lap. He was headed back to his rented room at the nearby San Diego Downtown Lodge . . . police caught up with him five minutes later.

. . . . But that was all part of the plan.

The way Lawrence tells it, Monday’s robbery of a Chase Bank was just a desperate ploy to get back behind bars, where he believes he will receive better medical care than he has been able to obtain on his own.

I suppose some will respond that we need to stop coddling prisoners.

More at The San Diego Union-Tribune (if you liked this post, you might also enjoy this one.)

Calculator: What the New Healthcare Bill Will Do for You

at WaPO.

Healthcare: You Want Ideas?

Why not make a rule that says, each insurance co. must offer the same plans, for the same premiums, to everyone?

Why should your access to healthcare depend on, e.g., whether you happen to work for a large corporation? How does it benefit society to allow insurance companies to just screw all the people who don't have the smarts or the leverage or the whatever to negotiate a better deal – e.g., free-lancers, or people working three part-time jobs to make ends meet, or children?

Do we really think healthcare should be a perq, like a company car, that people get only if they land the right job?

There are lots of reasons why an insurance company might want to charge one person more than another; and as a society, we might or might not decide to legitimate some of those reasons (e.g., whether or not you smoke). But why shouldn't we have more say as to which bases for charging higher premiums are appropriate?

Isn't it Ironic.

Per HuffPo, Tripp Palin Johnston has socialized health care through Indian Health Services and the Alaska Native Medical Center.

UPDATE: Per the Globe and Mail, during a recent appearance, Palin quipped, “We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn't that ironic?”

Another Great Chart Re- Healthcare

You'll have to click on the image to get a legible version; but basically, the turquoise lines represent countries that have universal coverage provided by public and private insurers, and the orange lines – the U.S. and Mexico – represent the countries that do NOT have universal coverage.

The US line is super-high on the left because that's how much more we spend compared to the other nations. And the US line is much lower on the right because, even though we spend so much more, our life expectancies are actually below the mean average of that in the others.

U.S. insurers have already had decades to show they could deliver better results doing it their way, and it hasn't worked.

In contrast, in many other countries, universal coverage with a public option has been working well for decades; it's a proven solution.

UPDATE: Here's a calculator to help you figure out how you'd fare under the new law as of this writing. I'd check the results under the "Senate Leadership Bill," since it seems whatever passes will more closely resemble that version. In my own case, it says I wouldn't be eligible for any subsidy, I should expect to pay nearly 13% of my before-tax income for insurance – and that doesn't count whatever I'll have to pay in deductibles, co-pays, etc. – AND there would be no cap on premium increases.

Re- Healthcare Reform

As I understand, the current Senate bill would force us to pay up to 8% of our incomes to insurance cos. while leaving us on the hook for up to $11,900 a year in out-of-pocket medical expenses, fail to end discrimination for most people based on preexisting conditions until 2014, and fail to limit increases in insurance premiums.

Most of the vaunted 30 million additional insureds will be those who need it least – young people likely to generate more profits than costs.

Let's repeat just part of that: 30 million new MANDATED payers of insurance premiums, and NO meaningful caps on what insurers can charge us.

We're being required to pay an awful lot for very little actual benefit to most of the people most in need.

It reminds me of when conservatives argued we had to keep funding the Iraq war or we wouldn't be able to afford to bring the troops home safely.

Our troops then were, and the few sick children who might actually be benefitted by this bill are now, being held for ransom by people who can't be trusted to fulfill any promises once we've paid up.

It also looks like another instance of the conservative strategy of causing us to spend way too much on the wrong things and later screaming to high heavens that we've got nothing left to spend on the right things.

Re- Stupak et Al.:

Suppose it were possible for a foetus to be implanted in a man's body and develop there until ready to be delivered.

Suppose, for example, a couple had had sex, and they weren't married, and they certainly didn't want children, so the man had used protection, but the protection had failed.

Suppose the recently-impregnated mother is killed in a car accident but the foetus survives, and the authorities are able to identify the father, and the foetus can be implanted in his body.

Does anyone believe it would be right for the state to FORCE the father to allow the foetus to be implanted in his body, to carry it within his body for nine months, and endure the hardships and hazards of pregnancy and delivery?

Does anyone believe it would be right for the state to force the father to subject himself to such procedures, hardships, and hazards – OR to pay extra in order to avoid subjecting himself to them, in effect ensuring that only poor fathers will be forced to endure them?

Even if we were to grant to a foetus with the I.Q. of a carrot the rights of a fully-formed human, are we so sure its rights should relegate its mother (but not its father) to the most abject slavery?

How is state-enforced pregnancy not the worst kind of involuntary servitude?

Stupak is aptly named.

(And while we're at it, why is a weeks-old foetus with the I.Q. of a carrot more deserving of protection than a chimpanzee capable of sign language?)

Michael Steele's Prediction

More hilarious than you might expect:



Thanks, DailyKos!

PAC-WE Performance/Action in Dallas

Dallas arts professionals and supporters gathered yesterday to participate in a performance action organized by Greg Metz in support of health insurance reform.

Participants included Noah Simblist, Dean Terry, Claude Albritton, Sarah Jane Semrad, Nancy Whitenack, Danette Dufilho, Charissa Terranova, Anne Lawrence, Bart Weiss, John Pomara, Raphael Parry, and many more.

Find more visuals here, PAC-WE's website here, and Dean Terry's interview of Metz here.

UPDATE: Here's a series of aerial photos by Harrison Evans showing the formation of the "Pac-We."

Action Alert: Join Artists in Demo for Health Insurance Reform

PAC-WE is organizing an artists' performance action Sun., Oct. 25, 11am - noon at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall, Dallas, TX, and you're invited! Just bring yourself and your friends; everything else will be supplied. More details here or in my previous post, here.

Click on the image, right, for a larger version. Even larger version (for printing posters or flyers) available here.

And tell your friends!

To get you in the mood, here's a video created by Ben Jones of Paper Rad to celebrate Pac-Man's 25th anniversary and the launch of the Pac-Man Inspired Music Series:

Best Health Insurance Reform Etc. Debate Yet

Maher can't keep up; give him credit for enjoying the challenge (he doesn't get many).

Affordable Healthcare for ALL (Even Artists)

Sun., Oct. 25, 11 - 12:00: PAC-WE "flash mob" convenes at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall, Dallas, TX, under the Mark di Suvero sculpture (the big orange-ish - red, x-ish, pendulum thing).

Many if not most artists and art professionals are independent contractors who must either pay dearly for health insurance or go without. PAC-WE is being organized in order to demonstrate in support of the meaningful health insurance reform so many of us badly need. As I understand, yellow ponchos will be provided in return for a very small donation, for participants to wear. The organizers write,

PAC-WE: An ACTION by and for the North Texas Art Community calling for health care reform.

PAC – WHAT? The Professional Artist Coalition is a ‘flash mob action’ creating a bright public yellow signal for health care reform. A first for Dallas, and this cause.

PAC - WHO? The North Texas art community. This includes thousands of citizens daily engaged in the visual, performing, literary, media, and commercial arts.

PAC- WHERE? Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall- convene under the di Suvero Sculpture ‘Proverb/ Pendulum for preparation of happening.

PAC- HOW? Show up and bring your friends, your coffee and donuts.

PAC- WHY? Because artists of any kind stand with the American people to demand a change to the status quo of a broken health care system. Because artists are unique victims of the health care status quo. Most are independent contractors, uninsured or underinsured. Because artists are fed up with other PAC's (Political Action Committees) funded by insurance and drug companies that are fighting to care for profits instead of health. Because the North Texas art community realizes that at the very moment that Dallas is celebrating its new PAC (Performing Arts Center), with architects and programming imported from elsewhere, it has no plan to sustain its own creative community. Because artists have been silent and invisible for too long when it comes to the health and care of our society.

PAC WE - The Origin of the Concept. PAC MAN is a sign of consumption. We often consume health care and culture without thinking about its wider context. We don't ask why healthcare costs so much or why so many are left without it.

We also don't ask about the livelihoods and healthcare of the artists that are seen as culture providers. Since the cuts in arts funding on a national and local level (most notably during the culture wars of the 1990s) artists have been cultural workers who contribute to our communities with little or no support in return.

But PAC MAN is also a sign of the earliest glimmer of technology and its promise for the future. When it was invented in the 1980's we would never have guessed that the internet would create a world that was so connected and empowered by the access to information. These qualities drive this event by connecting us and empowering us, based on our access to information that is so condemning of the status quo. These qualities bring us together on this day for this action.

We use the yellow color of PAC MAN as a sign of wisdom, optimism, clarity and awareness.

At left is a map of the location/route (click on the image for a larger version). See PAC-WE's facebook page, and more details soon at PAC-WE.

ALSO, MoveOn is holding a "Whose side are you on?" rally at noon on Wed., Oct. 14, at Senator John Cornyn's Office in north Dallas at 5001 Spring Valley Rd., Dallas (map).

Grayson Apologizes

Outraged Republicans have demanded an apology from Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) for his statement that "[i]f you get sick, . . . the Republican health care plan is this: die quickly." (More on Google News.) Here's Grayson's response:



Now that's hope I can believe in. Don't forget to go rate it up on YouTube.

Healthcare Reform

Merchandise (not mine) here.

Related only topically: Michael Moore on Twitter: “CBS has cancelled me on its Mon. morning show. After I criticized ABC/Disney on GMA, they didn’t want me to do same to CBS.”

Moore was on ABC’s Good Morning America last week and called out ABC’s practice of hiring “permalancers.” Here’s what Moore said, on the air:

“People backstage here — they don’t get to be real employees here [, so] they don’t get the benefits . . . I said ‘Guy, I was here two years ago, you were a freelancer, what are you doing here?’ — right backstage here at ABC — he said, ‘We call ourselves permalancers now.’ They don’t get to share in just the basic benefits that an employee used to have who worked here. . . .”

More here.

Congress to End Poverty by Requiring All Americans to Become Wealthy or Face Fines

Hey, if it works for healthcare reform . . . . (re- Senator Baucus's "reform" bill; see Howard Dean's take here). (Thanks, "unblock"!)

Why We REALLY Need the Public Option

As you know, the rationale is that the public option would give private insurers competition.

Opponents of the public option say, we can achieve our goals by passing laws prohibiting private insurers from cherry-picking insureds, excluding pre-existing conditions, etc.

(Of course, if we don't include a public option, we'll also have to regulate premiums. Otherwise, private insurers will have no incentive to keep costs down – including excessive executive pay and costs due to inefficiency or fraud – and they'll just pass those costs on to us and our employers. But of course, opponents' real plan is to try defeat any meaningful regulation – i.e., to avoid any meaningful restrictions on premiums, any requirement of universal coverage unless fully subsidized by taxpayers, etc.)

What I have yet to hear mentioned is that, if we just pass a lot of new prohibitions and requirements for the insurance industry without creating a public option, we'll also need to create a substantial new regulatory apparatus to make sure the insurers comply with the new rules. And we'll all have to stay on our toes to make sure that Congress continues to fund that agency at adequate levels.

The SEC was once known as one of the most effective regulatory agencies in government. Then it was defunded to the point that it simply lacked the manpower and resources to properly perform its responsibilities. Voilà Madoff and many other disasters.

Having a public option means we won't need a new regulatory apparatus to keep watch over private insurers' every move. Instead, insurers will be inherently incentivized to create and sell insurance products that match or better the public option.

We've been told for decades that private companies are more efficient than government. I'm sure that if the real costs of a public option turn out to exceed those for private insurance, the private insurers will let us all know about it.

(And I'm sure that if the healthcare provided by the public option turns out to be as terrible as they say, private insurers won't have any trouble selling us their whole or supplemental policies.)

What Health Insurance Reform Opponents & Christian Scientists Have in Common

A belief that disease and death either don't really exist or "can't happen to me," coupled with the suspicion that if you are suffering, you probably deserve it.

Dr. Dean Does It

(He and his audience correctly answer pertinent questions re- healthcare reform.)