Health Insurance

Health Insurance. It should be an issue of basic humanity.

Please understand — I hate politics. And it’s a VERY strange day when I decide to try and rally people around a political cause. But it’s nothing less than shameful we live in a country of such abundant wealth (even though many of us are up against hard times) and still don’t care for those among us who are sick.
It’s disgraceful and avoidable.

And the ONLY reason we don’t have some form of national health care is that we, the people, haven’t gotten off our collective backsides and fought for it.  We, the people, should have taken to the streets and demanded it from those we elected to look after our interests years ago.

I have been uninsured for most of my life.  And most of my friends are uninsured.  Are they unemployed?  NO.  With a few exceptions, most of my friends are in the entertainment industry — they’re actors, writers, directors and technicians.  And because of the difficulty finding work in their chosen profession, most of them also work “civilian” jobs — many work several.  But it’s not just artists that are affected by the lack of affordability of health care.

Some example from my life:

Temp agencies. 

I temped for many years of my life.  Most temp agencies don’t offer insurance and when they do there are strings. 

• You have to be employed with them every day for a certain period of time.
• And IF you qualify the premiums are usually too exorbitant.
• And many agencies don’t offer insurance at all. 

One of the reasons employers use temp agencies is they don’t have to pay benefits, i.e. health insurance and days off etc.  There was a time I was working for a temp agency when I won their most valuable temp award for the month.  At the time, I had a long-term assignment that lasted eight months.  I was hoping the job would go full time.  And, even then, I didn’t qualify for insurance.

Catering and the Restaurant Industry. 

There’s an old joke — “You’re an actor?  What restaurant?”

I don’t know anyone in food service (with the exception of Starbucks employees) that has health insurance.  I’m sure there is SOMEBODY, I just never met them.  Most of the time, when it’s offered, which is seldom, it simply takes too much out of your paycheck.  So, if you pay for health insurance you can’t pay your bills.  Or eat!  And that really isn’t good for your health. 

I remember once, working at a restaurant whose name I won’t mention. 

• They offered health insurance if you were consistently scheduled 40+ hours a week (for more than a month in a row).  But wouldn’t schedule anyone, including managers, over 37 hours.  That didn’t mean you wouldn’t end up working over 40 hours, you just weren’t scheduled and therefore couldn’t get insurance. 
• This restaurant also had a policy that if you called in sick, you couldn’t come back to work without a doctor’s note.  But finding a doctor who will see you without health insurance and then paying for it ($150/visit), well that was way over our budgets.  So, you can guess people didn’t call in sick.  Most of the time, people would come to work sick and either work or ask to be let go as soon as possible.  You didn’t have to have a doctor’s note if you came in to work and left early. 

Let me tell you about one evening in particular.  This really happened.  I’m not making it up.  I was managing the shift.  I didn’t feel great but it was just a cold and I had to be there.  There were seven servers including myself scheduled to work that evening.  Two called in sick.  So, I was down to five servers.  The other four people came into work.  They were ALL sick and running temperatures (the highest of which was of 101 degrees).  They’re coughing and sneezing.  I let the sickest among us leave, but couldn’t let everyone go.  It was a big restaurant and I couldn’t serve the entire place by myself.  So, there we were serving food.  Coughing and sneezing on people’s dinners because the servers didn’t have health insurance, couldn’t go to the doctor, couldn’t call in sick to rest and get better without going to the doctor before coming back to work, which they couldn’t afford to do because they didn’t have health insurance.  It was worse than sad — it was outrageous!  And I’d bet you hard money it’s the same situation today —  not good for anyone’s health including the restaurant-going public.

One final story:  I love New York City, but it’s an incredibly expensive place to live.   When I first came to New York, I was working three jobs, one part-time, two full-time (one in food service and the other as a temp).  I was making some money.  Hey, I could pay my rent and bills and buy food.  I was pretty happy.  And I investigated outside health insurance since I couldn’t get health insurance inside the two jobs I was working full time.  No matter where I looked, I couldn’t afford the health insurance that I could find.  At the time, I was in my late twenties and very healthy, but insurance was going to cost me almost one week’s pay, and if I’d chosen that, I couldn’t have paid my rent, bills and food.  And I was working three jobs!  I swore then if I ever saw anyone working towards even some kind of national healthcare or even modified national healthcare, it would be the one place where I would get involved politically.