For the past twelve years, I have been living with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease of the large intestine that causes chronic bleeding, anemia, and a host of other terrible symptoms that can make each day a challenge. For many of these past twelve years, I have been without health care coverage, relying on free clinics in New York City and lower-cost generic drugs that in my case did not prove to be nearly as effective as their more expensive counterparts.
This past April, my health took a serious downward turn, and I was hospitalized for nearly sixty days due to chronic hemorrhaging. It was my third extended hospital stay. While I am currently doing magnificently and have returned—finally!—to something resembling normalcy, I opened my mailbox today to discover the financial toll of my hospitalization.
The final tally? Nearly $200,000.
Fortunately, I have insurance through my domestic partner of seven and a half years. But this coverage came only after a vociferous, year-long battle with his employer who was reticent to extend benefits to same-sex couples, a privilege that in 2006 many homosexual couples across America are still denied.
But as an actor, playwright, and novelist, the notion of health care coverage extended through my artistic work seems even more unrealistic than the federal government extending nation-wide same-sex domestic partner benefits. In fact, the idea of health care coverage through my artistic work might make me laugh if the problem wasn’t so enormous and if lives were not literally at stake.
According to a recent poll of 268 artists from across the US conducted by the School of Arts and Culture of the University of the Poor, an artist’s collective whose goal is to end poverty, “only 7.2% of respondents reported having coverage through their artistic/cultural work. The largest group, 38.4%, has no coverage at all.”
More disturbingly, “69.9% reported that they or one of their dependent family members had gone without health treatment that they needed, because they were unable to pay for it,” and “66.9% of those without health insurance reported that, if a medical emergency struck, they would not know how [to] get the care that they would need.”
That last statistic is one that Holly Buczek, a New York-based actress, can relate to. One out of every four women has HPV, or human papillomavirus. The virus, for which a vaccine has recently been developed, can lead to cervical cancer. For those living with HPV, it is necessary to periodically eradicate potentially precancerous cervical cells. This minor surgical procedure, called a colposcopy, must be performed three times a year to prevent cancer.
However, “for an in-office visit to have the colposcopy (which takes no more than 5 minutes and requires no anesthesia) it costs $750 without health insurance—and that doesn’t include the lab work to see if you have cancer,” says Buczek. “Of course, you can have the procedure performed at a clinic, but you have to wait forever, which usually means having to miss a day of work, and it will still run you at least $300. And the lab work will be an additional $300.”
“It’s a city of artists,” says Buczek, “and most of us are without healthcare and have no way to get it.”
“It used to be,” says Jennifer Curfman, another East Coast actress, “that Actor’s Equity, the union for professional actors, required only ten work weeks to qualify for healthcare coverage. In recent years, however, that time has doubled. Broadway is filled with working-but-uninsured actors, singers, dancers, and musicians. If you’re lucky enough to be working at that level, you might still have to wait six months for your insurance to kick in.”
But there is hope. At the end of the last century, as America’s healthcare crisis seemed poised to engulf the country’s arts communities, several collectives emerged with the aim to provide information and methods of coverage to uninsured arts workers.
Fractured Atlas, “a national non-profit artist service organization providing a comprehensive range of support services for the independent arts community,” allows artists to “[enroll] in one of [the organization’s] low-cost healthcare plans. This “‘strength in numbers’ approach gives artists access to the same healthcare opportunities that workers in other industries enjoy.”
As well, The Actors’ Fund of America, a not-for-profit providing “a broad spectrum of social, health, employment, and housing programs that address [artist’s] essential and critical needs,” conducts regular workshops on healthcare coverage, in addition to offering guidance in “finding affordable health care when uninsured.”
The Access to Health Insurance/Resources for Care database, available on The Actors’ Fund’s web site, “was created in 1998 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as a health insurance resource for artists and people in the entertainment industry. Since then, with support from The Commonwealth Fund, it has expanded to include resources for [non-arts workers, including,] the self-employed, low-income workers, the under-insured, the uninsured who require medical care and many other groups.”
The site boasts over 6,000 links to national, state and local healthcare options.
Still, coverage will inevitably cost out-of-pocket money, and as The University of the Poor points out, “artists and cultural workers are routinely uncompensated or under-compensated for their work, with a large proportion falling under the poverty level.”
Indeed. For although I am, as I said previously, currently insured, I still owe well over $4,000 for my most recent hospital stay, and working conventional jobs with ulcerative colitis is next to impossible—so much so that after my second hospital stay, I declared bankruptcy because of the insurmountable medical bills and my inability to hold down regular work of any kind.
As artists and cultural workers in America, it is our responsibility to constantly question the health of our cultural landscape. But at the same time we must remain aware of the health of the artists themselves and continue to fight for their personal health and well being. To do any less would be unconscionable.
