 "Photo: Courtesy of Healthcare for Artists")
06/15/07On a desk at Kathy Bitetti's day job, there is a stack of hand-made "thank you" cards decorated with scrap material she had left over from a recent art project. "Good manners go a long way," Bitetti said. "I always tell people, never send a 'thank you' email unless you know the person really well. Send a card."
As the executive director of The Artists Foundation, Bitetti is facilitating nearly 20 Artist Town Meetings across the state to promote one of the foundation's key initiatives, Healthcare for Artists. The initiative and accompanying website were set up in just one week in response to the Massachusetts healthcare reform legislation passed in April of 2006. Part of this legislation, known as the individual mandate, requires all Massachusetts residents to have health insurance by Dec. 31, 2007.
When Bitetti says advocacy is easier than it looks, it's hard to know if she's referring to decoding public policy or testifying at the state house or the long hours she puts in, because all of it looks hard. At an Artist Town meeting co-hosted by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) held at Emmanuel College this week, Bitetti admitted she was up until 1 a.m. the night before making "thank you" cards for the staff and board of the Connector Authority -- the agency set up to implement the health care reform legislation.
On June 5, at the Connector Authority's monthly meeting, the board decided on a fine distinction in terms that will have a big impact on artists like Bitetti.
"The previous language that was being used was 'gross income' to determine whether or not people would be mandated to purchase health insurance," said Dick Powers, spokesperson for the Connector Authority. "Kathy has attended all of the meetings and has advocated tirelessly on behalf of the artists community. As a result, the language was changed from 'gross income' to 'adjusted gross income,'" Powers said.
The addition of the word "adjusted," that's what the "thank you" cards are for, she said.
The difference between gross income and income after accounting for big expenses like art supplies and studio space could make the difference between being able to afford a health plan or not. "This doesn't have an impact on just the artist's community, but it impacts all self-employed people in Massachusetts," Powers said.
But big overhead is just one reason why artists are a difficult population to insure. An artist's income is often sporadic and comes from multiple sources, making it difficult to determine whether or not individuals should qualify for subsidized healthcare. Bitetti actually has four days jobs, including working as an adjunct faculty at Emmanuel College and as a graduate mentor at the Art Institute of Boston.
Andrea Lyman, a Boston-area actress and chair of the AFTRA/SAG conservatory that helped co-host the Artist Town Meeting at Emmanuel College, said that although she's not unemployed, there have been plenty of times she found herself uninsured. "I'm in three different unions and I work within all three," Lyman said. "At times I've been covered by each of them separately, but the bulk of the time I'm not insured by any of them." While AFTRA, SAG and Actor's Equity each offer their members a group health insurance plan, only members who do a minimum amount of work within that union qualify for coverage. If you happen to do a little work in all three unions, as Lyman explained she does, it can be difficult to qualify for any of the three union's plans. Right now, Lyman said she's insured with Commonwealth Care, one of the state's subsidized healthcare plans.
Bitetti said research consistently shows that artists are twice as likely to be uninsured as compared to the general population. The most recent research to back that up came out of Minnesota where a report released in March of this year found that 14% of artists in that state were uninsured and 28% of artists were paying for individual plans. The study released by Minnesota Citizens for the Arts was extremely helpful in making the case to the Massachusetts state house that artists were an important part of the picture of uninsured residents here too.
Getting involved in public policy may seem complicated, but Bitetti swears it's not. "It's like if you're a lawyer trying to win your case or if you're a little kid trying to stay up past your bedtime, it's the same thing, you're lobbying your case. It's persuasion. It's the same principle as figuring out how you're going to get your work out there to a curator or get a call back for an audition."
Bitetti finds the people she meets at Artist Town Meetings are always surprised at how much the Artists Foundation has been able to get done. Besides the passing of a bill regulating the consignment of fine art, there are now four bills on deck at the state house that have the word "artist" in them. Those four bills, she explains, began from a simple conversation with Chairman Representative Eric Turkington of the Joint Committee for Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development. "He said, ok, what are the issues, and I told him what the issues were, and he said, ok write the bills up, we'll work with you to write them, and we'll file what's called a legislative package we'll try to pass them. It was that easy," Bitetti said.
According to Bitetti, advocacy has a lot in common with artistry. Artists are good critical thinkers, they're used to working with limited resources and they're used to hearing 'no.' And as Woody Allen says about show business, it seems in advocacy too, eighty percent of success is just showing up.
Besides the personal touch of the many artists along the way who have testified at public hearings and written personal letters in order to help shape the implementation of the Massachusetts health care reform legislation, Bitetti also attributes her success to the people at the Connector Authority who she said are "outstanding in their transparency and in listening to communities."
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