The research determined that the primary cause of the uninsured status is the cost of a plan.
According to the results of a study that are making insurance news headlines after having been released by the Future of Music Coalition and the Artists’ Health Insurance Resource Center, twice as many artists such as actors, musicians, dancers, and others are likely to be uninsured as the general population.
These creative individuals are among the demographics least likely to have health plans.
The research making this insurance news involved a survey of 3,402 professional actors, filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, and dancers, among whom it was determined that 43 percent did not have health coverage. A Kaiser Family Foundation study has previously shown that the general population’s uninsured rate was 18 percent.
In this insurance news, it was found that the majority of artists said that they couldn’t afford the coverage.
The vast majority, 88 percent, of the respondents claimed that they were not able to afford health insurance coverage, said the results of the survey. Though this information is interesting and it does provide the precise statistics regarding the situation, this insurance news didn’t come as a tremendous surprise to many people within the industry – nor to the authors of the report itself, for that matter.
Kristin Thompson of the FMC, one of the authors of the study, said that “These results confirm what arts advocates and supporters already know; that U.S.-based artists are much less likely to have health insurance.” She added that “With vast swaths of the artistic community currently uninsured, and many either self-employed, low-income or under 65, self-employed artists are exactly who the Affordable Care Act is designed to help.”
The Kaiser Family Foundation also previously released insurance news that found that 6 percent of the general population pays for its own health coverage. Within the latest study, the artists who were surveyed revealed that 39 percent of them were paying for their own coverage, instead of receiving it through an employer. This could, potentially, be a defining factor in the current affordability of the plans for people in this industry.
