Postcard from New York: on a wing and a prayer?
A church, caught trying to sneak it’s way through the cross streets, snapped from the 20th floor of the Conde Nast building.
This one’s to your health! Or, “santé!” That’s what the French say. But nobody’s said it with more sinister dastardliness than Rod Steiger did, in Doctor Zhivago. I still shudder when I hear “santé” pronounced!
It’s been a hard week for newyorkette, between telecommunications mixups (resulting in me sending my batch to the wrong person—someone who doesn’t even appreciate my sense of humor, darn him!) and the severe cold that has laid me flat for a week (I’ll never forget the people at that two-day Calvin Klein booking last weekend asking me several times, “Are you cold?” I answered affirmatively several times, but it looked like everyone present figured someone else would take care of turning down the A/C and it never got done. Bless their souls! They paid me well, and were otherwise a great gig, so why gripe about a little fever and excessive mucous?)
Well, it hasn’t all been in vain! My hypochondriac wanderings on the net have resulted in the discovery of a site, fracturedatlas, which groups together in a very simple presentation all the options open to New York artists in the way of health care and health insurance. The main page with the list is here. Lest you think I have a bias towards New York artists, I probably do, but rest assured they also cover other states, which you can choose here.
The advantage over the well-publicized Freelance Workers Union and Mediabistro for me was the simplicity of the website and the ease of access to people who could answer my questions. If you’re going to cater to artists, you have to keep in mind that we’re not the kind of people who want to navigate endless webpages searching for a clue, and not see clear answers to our questions immediately. We artists tend to have short attention spans, a certain resistance to taking care of ourselves and growing up, and an innate aversion to advertising, bureaucratic mumbojumbo, and rules, regulations and exceptions to be plowed through. So a site like Fractured Atlas is much more well-adapted to our ilk. I hardly had to read anything before finding the list of plans.
I have just signed up for the “pilot stage” Arts Wellness program (for $10 a month), which isn’t health insurance, but rather membership with a network of healthcare providers who will treat artists for a range of needs, for cheap or for nothing. I’m always for trying something new, especially if it’s cheap. And I think the time has come for us to try alternatives to the health insurance monster in this country.
Also, I signed up for what is basically “catastrophic” coverage, with the Healthflex 2000, for $169 a month. It provides for dreadful accidents and the like, “worst-scene scenarios.” It will give me the confidence to play softball again (I’d become rather inhibited after jamming my cartoon finger twice last season, and getting my clock cleaned by an errant softball during warm-up). I can’t responsably (so they say) recommend this approach to anyone, but for me, I’m fine with catastrophic plus the cheap self-pay if I’m contributing to a system where other artists will benefit. Particularly since I rarely go to the doctor, and never believe doctors or even fill my prescriptions when I do see them.
No disclosure necessary: I’m just pleased to have discovered them and want to pass it along to all my uninsured artist friends and readers out there. (I did try to feel them out to see if a plug would get me a discount of any type whatsoever, but they didn’t bite. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I always say.)
NB: Fractured Atlas was mentioned today on a rebroadcast Brian Lehrer show, on WNYC, on the subject of health insurance.
