Pelosi: Artists shouldn't have to work to have insurance!

From 'I swear to god im not making it up' news...

So I have to pay more so dipshit artists who aren't good enough at their chosen vocation to support themselves can be healthy WHY?

I'm all for the arts, but I'm all against gubmint subsidization of the arts. If you don't have a marketable art skill, get a real job and do your paintings or whatever on your own time.

Artists may work their assess off and not have steady employment. Actors, for example, will move from job to job every several weeks, if not sooner. In a society where health insurance is linked to a steady employer, that means their only option to get a single-payer plan at multiple times the cost, or be part of a union that offers a group plan. Having a national healthcare option would benefit them, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be paying monthly premiums like everyone else.

Define "work."

Stop talking sense! Have you forgotten where you are?

As for the OP, I'm guessing the assumption is that the arts just create themselves.

No, you make money off your art or you do it in your free time. My sister-in-law paints murals. She'll get $30k for a two month job. She pays bills with that and gets healthcare.

Now, when she WASN'T getting those kinds of jobs, her and my brother had other jobs and she painted as a side source of supplemental income. She didn't keep painting stuff she wasn't getting paid for and hope someone would help her out.

If you can't make a living doing your job, get a new goddamn job. Or is that kind of thinking too conservative and closed-minded of me?

I'm trying to understand the "helping her out" part. Access to group health insurance into which the individual pays premiums ain't exactly a handout.

It is when said premiums are assisted with government subsidies, which is IIRC the language of the current bill.

So yes, getting free money is a handout.

Spoken by someone whose employer no doubt has him covered.

I agree with Demi and my employer doesn't offer health insurance.

Indeed. A substantial portion of my renumeration is covered under 'benefits.'

My employer provides these benefits because I have skills that it is in their best interests to compensate for.

I know reality is a concept of dubious providence for you. So much better if you could just make things 'fair' by waving your magic wand.

But explaining reality to to the reality impaired grows tedious.

I have mixed feelings on gov't art subsidies. Ideally you have an aristocratic elite with good taste that makes sure the Wagners, Verdi, Mozarts, and Beethovens of the world never have to worry about money a day in their lives and are free to produce as much great art as possible - through private, voluntary funding. I'd much rather the gov't subsidize high art rather than subsidize high fructose corn syrup. If the choice is between good artists having no funding vs. good artists being funded through some tax money. I reluctantly choose taxpayer funding.

But that's only for good art. Not Jesus in a glass of piss or a portrait of Mary covered in elephant shit. Since I'm not in a position to make the distinction and don't trust the people who are, I'm against gov't funding of the arts.

But that's just the kind of "avant-garde" and "non-commercial" art that public subsidies help create. The people who create beautiful and compelling "regular" art (i.e., the kind of art the non-pretentious enjoy) don't need subsidies.

Wise.

A. I've never favored government subsidies for individual artists at all in any form - the whole nature of art is that GOOD art survives because people will support it and crappy artists find out no one wants their shit. when all are equally eligible for subsidies then you get....more shit (proportionate to the whole);

B. You might be surprised to find that i agree with what Pelosi said - just not with the point she intended to make. she went on to speak of people entrapanurially starting their own businesses and so forth and YES, I think it's great for the economy and particularly innovative people IF there is a circumstance in which they are not anchored in a limiting position by the need to maintain the group health coverage. the thing is, while that's a GREAT goal - the piece of shit legislation she's pimping is NOT going to produce that and even if it did, it will fuck up so many other things that the price of the whistle is too high.

there are a number of smart reforms that could be enacted (MSA's for one obvious choice) which would help create the circumstance she describes.

While she didn't put it very well, there's a worthwhile point behind what Pelosi said.

Our economy is becoming more and more freelance-heavy. While conventional employment (punch a clock for one employer and take home a paycheck every two weeks) is certainly still the model for a majority of Americans, there are a whole lot of people making a living as independent contractors, working not for one single employer but for a large number of clients. For full-time freelancers, affordable insurance can be hard to obtain, because of the extent to which health insurance has become coupled with employment. There needs to be some way for a self-employed person to buy into a pool in the same way that a person who punches a clock for a business does.

How do you propose to do that? Somebody's got to pay for it.

In my case, I work for a company that employs about 50 RNs, LPNs, and CNAs, and a handful of office staff to care for patients that are mostly Medicaid and Medicare (gubmint insurances) and can't afford to provide insurance.

I would suggest getting rid of most of the gubmint bureaucracy, red tape, and bullshit paperwork that was created by the gubmint and drives up the cost of us doing business.

Seeing as it was largely the gubmint that created the healthcare logjam in the first place, I don't approve of putting the inmates in charge of the asylum.

I propose you spell "government" properly.

I'll gladly give the gubmint my respect when they earn it.

Have you been paying any attention at all to the last couple of years of debate about health insurance reform? You just can't be serious.

The customers themselves pay for it. The trouble is that individual plans tend to be far more expensive than plans where you're part of a company pool. There are some options -- chambers of commerce sometimes have group plans that their members can get in on -- but by and large, insurance is so closely coupled with employment that it can be a big problem for self-employed people.

Yes I have been paying attention.

I guess we'll just have to let them pass the bill so we can see what's in it.

I have no problem with such group plans. That's capitalism at work. What I don't want is the gubmint taking it over.

I have no problem with that. I can, with no difficulty whatsoever, think of an economy where people can be whatever they want without having to "worry about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance." It is, very simply, an economy where health insurance is something you buy, freely, yourself, just like any other commodity, if you want it and in the quantity and form you want. It is not tied to employment.

If you are able to make enough money to do so, then you have no need to "keep your day job." If, for example, you make a huge amount of money every once in a while, when you sell an artwork, then go for months at a time with no income, you will get along fine.

Where I have a problem is not with what Pelosi said, but with any proposal that says you can "be an artist" without making enough money to live from, but society will somehow provide for you anyway. If you are not providing a service or product that people want enough to pay you for it in amounts that compensate you correctly for providing it, then there is no advantage to anyone in you providing it. But she didn't say that, despite all the outcry here.

I am fully in favor of separating health care from employment, so that people are much more free to change jobs as they want.

I find it amazing that that is not easy to do in America. There are many mutual insurance societies here, that one joins freely if one wants, and which provide extremely good insurance at extremely competitive prices, and have a wonderful client support program while they're at it. I have almost all of my inusurances through such a society, and it works out fine. They're making money, the people are happy with it, and the government doesn't have to subsidize them in order for it all to work.

There are also plenty of private companies that sell various types of insurance, which also manage without governent subsidy. Car insurance, home insurance, life insurance, complementary health insurance (since the national system generally only pays 75% of medical costs on most things), and just about any other kind of insurance people want. If people are willing to pay for it at a price that makes it worthwhile, they will sell it.

Why can't that work in "the land of free entrerprise"?

Don't actors already have something similar?


While Dr. Drake Ramoray would know for sure, I seem to remember an episode of Friends that showed how Joey needed have an acting job every so often in order to keep his SAG health insurance.

It's worth noting that the only reason health insurance IS so closely tied to employment is from a previous episode of "government helping us"

It’s interesting that this has partially turned into a debate about government subsidies for the arts, since that has little, if anything to do with the point Pelosi was trying to make.

Let’s read the more complete quote from the interview in question:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35835370/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/

Seniors. Youth. Women. Entrepreneurs. (Conservatives LOVE entrepreneurs!) And yes, artists. Interesting how the one example about artists is taken out of context and made into an article unto itself. (Conservatives HATE artists; why don't they get a real job, like peddling subprime loans!?)

The point is, anyone who doesn’t maintain a traditional “full time” employment or wish to be part of a guild or union can benefit from a government-operated group plan. It doesn’t necessarily replace existing private options, it could be another option alongside them.

Since neoliberals are against unions and traditional “lifetime” employment, arguing for the ongoing “frictional adjustments” to maximize economic efficiency, I would think they’d be jumping on this.

No. They won't benefit from a government operated plan.

Not out of context. Pelosi was pimping out to that exact segment, and a headline that chose the word "artist" is apt.


Conseratives and liberals alike agree that the best results achievable from a quick fix is simply a matter of reform of insurance regulation - this is the low hanging fruit (rules that detach insurance from employment-based, portability of policies, limits on dropping people who recently discovered major afflictions, some means of dealing with preexisting, extra fees for fatees, alcoholics and heavy smokers).

The discount to insure a pool of workers starts at 10 or more staff, and it's not much of a discount. Pooling of local self-employed should already be offered as a natural consequence of competition, but government regulation has made selling health insurance to most people a less profitable business (e.g. in NY everyone must be offered cover even obese heart failed diabetic, and NY also uses "community pricing," each of which increases rates for all, with young & healthy subsizing fat smoking old and sick). Since only a consumer that does not maximize value would pay to insure before they needed serious medical care, we could also predict many additional free riders which, again, would tend to increase the rates of all those who pay.

Government regulation already has rules about insurance companies, but they need some serious fixing (cross state lines, portability of policies, and the feds should've preempted the states a long time ago like they did with broker-dealer or investment adviser law but half of congress in the pocket of insurance industry, etc.).

The best results would come from fewer, smarter rules, but not enough people understand this concept (not popular among those who "know") and congress is mostly lawyers and lawyers believe laws solve everything and it's a vicious circle because even bad laws are rarely un-written. So bad law on top of bad laws with the occasional good ones thrown in.

Sort of off topic, and I don't want to detract from what is overall a very good post, but spelling "fattys" this way makes it look like you want people who are victims of fate to have to pay more...

Re: Define "work."

Baroness von Waldstätten, the Medicis and Charles Saatchi disagree's!