A healthcare safety net in tatters
Actors and other arts professionals in gig economy rely on their unions to provide insurance, but that is failing
The health care and retirement systems by which performing artists sustain themselves have fallen apart in the pandemic with potentially catastrophic results on both personal and systemic levels.
There has to be a better way to do this.
Many Americans receive healthcare coverage as part of their full-time employment. Performers, of course, don’t have a single employer at one time but rather many gigs as they move fromstagework to film to television. Their unions have stepped in to become the main source of health insurance. The longlived system is based on a defined set of contributions madeweekly by producers while performers are in their employ. As long as an artistworks a reasonable number ofweeks, coverage fromthe union is assured.
Historically, the system has benefitted producers and non-profit arts organizations aswell. They’ve been able to hire the people theywant on short-term contracts, even a single week, without the need to set up their own healthinsurance programs.
The crisis has evolved because of the closure of theaters and music venues, and the reduction in film and televisionwork. The system is funded by the producing entities and when there is no hiring going on, there are no contributions. And the whole thing collapses.
In the case of Actors’ Equity, which has a jurisdiction over stagework and covers actors and stage managers, the situation is grave. In recent days, the
Equity-League Benefit Fund has increased the number ofworkweeks necessary to qualify for decent insurance, claiming thatwas the onlyway for the fund to survive. The SAG-AFTRA union did much the same thing over the summer. Many memberswere outraged.
Just when the number of availableworkweeks was at its lowest ebb, the requirement increased. It’s theworst possible time.
Since the union and the Benefit Fund have different governing structures, the union tried to get out ahead of the story and actually criticized its own health plan for these changes. The council governing the insurance responded, in essence, by saying that without the modifications therewould be no health insurance for anyone since the whole programwould collapse. And given howit’s funded, the plan remains on shaky ground, even after these diminishments.
Actors’ health insurance has run into trouble before.
During the AIDS crisis, which disproportionately affected the arts, the plan was hit with very high bills for coverage. But even then, at least, the core funding supportwasmaintained. That’s not true in the fall of 2020 and most likely into next year.
Like everything else these days, the issue is deeply political and people are embittered. Actors’ Equity mostly has been very reluctant to allow performers to accept contracts and return towork, arguing that its first responsibility is to the safety of its members and that it remains unconvinced that sufficient attention is being paid to theirwell-being. Some producers, and some union members, believe that the union has been insufficiently flexible and too disrespectful of the rights of its members to
make their own personal decisions as to whether or not towork.
Eitherway, and whatever the finger-pointing, the system requireswork to be performed in order to function and there is preciously little of that right now. A lot of ordinary performers feel caught in the middle.
Worse, territorial fights have burst into the open over the last few days, including a rowover which union has jurisdiction when a live theater streams a show. Are such endeavors theatrical productions that have adjusted to new realities (meaning they should be under Equity jurisdiction)? Or are they actually movies (meaning the SAGAFTRA union rules the roost)?
This tiff is more significant than you might think because if streaming shows aren’t Equity, then the Equity health plan is not getting those contributions and Equity also says its members are losing money. For its part, SAG-AFTRA has said it can be flexible in the short-term, but also has an obligation to protect its territory (and its own ailing health and pensions plan), nowthat virtually every arts organization is in the
streaming business. What a mess! As evidenced by the recent reorganizational announcement from Disney and the increasingly bleak future haunting the business of exhibitingmovies, even at beloved independents like the Logan Theatre in Chicago, inhome streaming is becoming the beast that ate everyone and everything. Streaming has used the pandemic for its oxygen and the rest of live entertainment nowis struggling to breathe.
Why should you care if all you do iswatchHBOor go to the occasional touring Broadway show?
Well, without a viable professional structure, artists cannot count on healthcare if they get sick and that will lead to a talent drain. Members of the public consistently overestimate thewealth and pay rates of actors on stage and TV shows. In this era of dauntingly competitive amounts of streaming content, compensation has fallen for almost everyone without a star name. Your favorite guest star on a TV showmightwell find themselves hurting for insurance in a few years; hence the
widespread amazement in 2018 when Geoffrey Owens, a former actor on “The Cosby Show,” was shamed on social media for bagging groceries.
Most people whowork in the businessweren’t surprised for a moment. The gig economy is never at its best when gigs dry up.
So what to do? The political narrative is likely to change, post-election, and the progressive objection to reopening is likely to diminish as trust in political leadership increases, even if the virus knows nothing of elections. That change in the media narrative, hopefully accompanied by COVID treatments and vaccines, should allowthe union to soften its stance. Certainly, it will need to better recognize that members will make different choices according to their own tolerance for risk.
But nowwe’ve seen what happens when an employment-based healthcare system meets very little actual employment as a consequence of publichealth regulations or, you might say, the hand of God. We nowknowit couldwell happen again.
Efforts are being made for income relief for artists,
but health insurance, or the lack thereof, is a looming catastrophe for the sector, and one that falls disproportionately on artists of color and on those who do not come from affluent backgrounds. Workingclass artists are crucial to the arts. Their participation is dependent on a solution to this issue, such as a subsidized version of COBRA.
Artists hardly are the only ones facing a healthinsurance crisis. But despite the rise of lobbying groups like the new Be An ArtsHero campaign for federal aid, the devastated arts sector has not enjoyed even a fraction of the support compared to, say, the help bandied about for airlines. This disparity has been addressed in other nations trying to recover from the pandemic. The dire situation faced by those whowork for your entertainment adds further weight to the argument that meaningfully expansive healthcare reform will need to be at the top of the agenda for the next president of theUnited States.