Artists United for Health Care

The Actors Fund’s Health Insurance Resource Center (HIRC), in partnership with The Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) and Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), has launched a national artists’ health care reform website, Artists United for Health Care.

As attention to health care reform takes center stage nationally, the Artists United for Health Care site brings attention to the critical place of artists in the reform debate. Because a high percentage of those who work in the arts – a group totaling more than 2 million American citizens – don’t receive health insurance benefits through employers and are twice as likely to be uninsured as the general population, the dire need for reform must focus on solutions that go further than employer-provided benefits. In order to keep the arts in America healthy and thriving, all artists must have access to affordable, comprehensive health insurance and care.

The website’s goal is to enable artists to get directly involved in advocating for meaningful and real reform through sending letters to their Congressional representatives and by joining with other participating organizations who are working hard to effect change.

The Artists United for Health Care site:
•    Explains the barriers and restrictions individuals face when   obtaining health insurance in the current private insurance market.
•    Identifies existing local and national grass-roots organizations lobbying for health care change.
•    Provides tools for every artist to get involved in health care reform, including letters to Congress and Senate representatives and letters to the editor; contacts for organizing and attending events and seminars for artists; and easy ways to help spread the word.
•    Invites artists to share their own personal health care stories, which will be posted on the site.
•    Links to the day’s news stories about the rapidly developing health care reform debate.

“Artists are one of the most uninsured groups in this country, and we now have a real opportunity to change that,” says Jim Brown, The Actors Fund’s Director of Health Services.  “This is the time for us – and for all Americans – to demand universal health care coverage as a right.”