On March 23, President Obama signed health care reform legislation into law. The bill constitutes the largest expansion of federal health care guarantees and was a major victory for President Obama and Democrats. “We are a nation that does what is hard, what is necessary, what is right… [the bill delivered] core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care,” said Obama. This push for an overhaul to America’s health care system was widely supported by several national art advocacy groups and individual artists, but strongly opposed by others.
Nation’s arts community pushed congress for health care reform
In August 2009, Americans for the Arts (the nation’s leading nonprofit for advancing the arts) called on Congress to pass the health care reform bill. In a statement released by the organization, they express concerns over how the economic crisis has affected the cultural sector—causing many in the cultural workforce in an independent or nontraditional employment relationships, to be locked out of group healthcare coverage options. In addition, it stated that the soaring health care costs are devastating to nonprofit arts organization budgets and individual artists who must pay for private health care. The statement closes with a plea to Congress to provide universal insurance coverage to the cultural sector because they too deserve affordable, preventive patient care.
Today, Americans for the Arts commends Congress on passing health care reform legislation. They are confident the bill will ensure the cultural workforce increased access to the health coverage they deserve, provide some insurance costs relief for non-profit art organizations and small businesses in the arts, and provide national health benefit exchange provisions for individual artists and non-profit organization that are currently excluded from employer-based insurance plans. “After decades of being locked out of group health care coverage options or taxed with a high-cost burden for insurance, the more than two million U.S. arts workers now have access to the health care they rightly deserved,” states Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts.
Others feel health care reform promotes unemployed artists to live comfortably
“Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the Rachel Maddow show. Statements like this enraged many people, causing them to accuse the president for formulating incentives for people to be unproductive Americas. Mary Katherine Ham reported in The Examiner “liberal Boomers such as Nancy Pelosi insist on creating government incentives for a generation of people to be unemployed artists who will have their health care paid for by productive members of society”. Ham also states how “young charcoal artists” earning potential is unrecognizable, forcing the “profit-making workers” to support these artists’ health care needs while they live comfortably. Ham, like many other, strongly feels that the health care reform will produce uneducated, able-bodied people who can not take care of themselves.
The health care reform bill continues to be the topic of strong debate, even in regards to the arts. The art community applauds the reform and knows it will be cost-effective. But, other Americans strongly oppose this reform because they feel it will promote a society of a non-working class people, which will include artists.
Do you think health care reform helps the arts? Share your thoughts with us.
Published by Clarke Art Consulting © 2010
