Cover Thyself, Indie Kids!

In what will probably be the only other time my music aspirations converge with my familiarity in health care, I noticed this news article on Pitchfork about a nonprofit organization offering resources for connecting musicians to health care. The org is the Future of Music Coalition (with an enviable domain name!), and they're not offering health care plans or coops (the kind one would find through an artists' union, for example), but they are running an info line that should ultimately encourage more musicians to get health insurance for themselves, since so many of them are part of the roughly 16% of the country that do not have basic insurance. Ironically, I've currently working on a grant proposal to fund health care access for the uninsured, so the article struck me as timely (and also struck a more personal chord). Berklee School of Music is right across the street from our health center, so musicians do, in fact, make up a good portion of our clients, although thankfully the ones who don't drop out of Berklee presumably have some form of student insurance.

FMC's executive director, Jenny Toomey, speaks articulately in the Pitchfork article about what are essentially issues of health literacy (without using this term), more directly about the same (mis)conceptions about health care that affect health coverage among young adults everywhere. In Massachusetts, the 19-34 age group makes up a full 17% of the uninsured, many of whom view being uninsured as a reasonable risk to assume when you're young and healthy. Toomey has this to say on the "live fast, die young" musician stereotype, talking about people leaving the music biz when they realize they need health insurance:

I think that musicians have more to say, understand more about the world, understand more about art, the longer they make music. And if what we're saying is you can only afford to do it when you're dumb and young, then it's really [going to] impact the kind of music people are going to make in this country...

...which is an interesting way to look at the problem of health coverage, postulating that musicians leave a life of self-employment when they reach a certain level of maturity or responsibility that connotes having things like health insurance. (Which assumes that musicians will easily find employers who will provide this benefit, which is another issue...) But I wonder if her theory's correct, and if it's at work in other fields, too. (Thoughts?)

Massachusetts is in the process of creating high-deductible, low-premium plans for folks in their twenties as part of this year's sweeping health care reform act. It would be interesting, if such plans succeed in encouraging more young artists to get coverage, to see if more musicians will have greater longevity -- and as Toomey implies, greater artistic maturity -- by having health insurance, and a better quality of life.

Click here for more information on the Future of Music Coalition's health insurance resources for musicians.