The pros and cons ... or the cons of pros

Sorry, if this seems like it has an obvious answer, but What are healthcare options for musicians?
I have always worked for a company that provided insurance as a benefit, with them sharing the cost. I am able to work less at the day job now & gigging is becoming more of my income to the point where I can play full time in the coming year. This thread has given me some insight on things I need to do that are normally provided by work but may not be there for awhile.
 
Sorry, if this seems like it has an obvious answer, but What are healthcare options for musicians?

In my experience there were never any options other than signing up for a policy that you paid for yourself or waiting until you got really sick and going to a doctor and paying for that yourself.

Maybe it's different now but I very much doubt it.
 
In my experience there were never any options other than signing up for a policy that you paid for yourself or waiting until you got really sick and going to a doctor and paying for that yourself.

Maybe it's different now but I very much doubt it.

What happens in the US if you are seriously ill and can't afford either the insurance or the treatment? I imagine some struggling musos trying to get established would face this.
 
Well it seems yet again a person pushing a political agenda has yet again sidetracked an entire tread.

Musicians touring need to buy insurance for the countries they visit. For other who remain static in one place the situation is different. It should be noted that NOT all musicians are American and that music takes place in such diverse and out of the way places such as Europe, Asia, South America, the sub continent and even such far off and exotic places as Australia and Middle Earth. Also known as New Zealand.

Strangely, the American health system does not affect Parisian musicians. I know, unbelievable! Who'd have thought that the center of the universe is not located between Canada and Cuba??

The American health system, so derided with the scorn and contempt (rightly so) of the modern civilised world, is probably worthy of its own thread. There the people on the right can wail on about Communism and the threat of the lower classes to their way of life to their hard hearts content. And those on the left can curse those on the right in between working three jobs to stay at the poverty level, all 40 million of them.

Until then though is there a chance this thread, begun by an Australian can remain international?
 
I am super late to this thread (i've been away from the board for a while) but I thought I would give my personal pros and cons.

Pro's:

Playing for a crowd. It does not matter how much money I am making but when I am playing for a crowd It is one of the best feelings in the world and it is such a rush that I really have fun when I am playing. If the crowd isn't there or into it you really couldn't pay me enough to do it.

the $$$. I can take in more $ in two nights that I used to take in at my day job in an entire week. Some gigs like festivals I take home more than a weeks wage. The WORST day behind the kit is better than the BEST day at the day job.

Travel. I have played shows in 47 states, and three different countries. I have done a lot of travel and seen the states/world for free. I am at the point now where the travel is pretty cush. I don't have to drive ever, we stay in decent hotels, eat pretty decent meals, the only bad part about the road is sometimes the rides are long between gigs but I just catch up on sleep.

I don't know how to put this but one of the pros is having freedom to sleep till 2 in the afternoon, not shave for a week or five, dress comfortably all the time, curse like a sailor, tell inappropriate jokes. and in general be my own boss and not have to put up with corporate b.s.

CONS

No weekends ever. I am booked through the end of the year I think I have the 24th and 25th of december off. I had one saturday off this past year and I didn't know what to do with myself and ended up working on merch for the band anyways.

maintaining relationships. I have a hard time maintaining long term relationships because of my schedule. On the road there is hardly any alone time to make personal phone calls, you are constantly surrounded by your band mates. I even have a hard time making time to go see my parents. This also goes in with the no weekends stuff nobody wants to hang out on monday/tuesday nights. If you want to be a pro musician it is a really selfish profession because to have great musicianship you have to be dedicated and available all the time.

no long term security. I know I am covered till december with gigs, but really bands are always a volatile thing and a band could break up at any moment. this is more a problem at first because you usually only have about 3 months booked ahead and it can be scary wondering what happens after that but a few years in and you realize there will always be gigs.

The second playing becomes your main source of income things change. It is really hard to carve out time to work on new material and to get creative when you have to play gigs to eat. You have to stay busy and some weeks if you have 4 shows and one or two rehearsals there just isn't time to work on new songs and projects. You can't take a break from playing shows to write (which is something my other bands used to do all the time before I went pro)
 
Well, my story is really just anecdotal, I guess, considering that things aren't the way they were back in the seventies and eighties. I don't know how anything pertaining to my own career would have any relevance to the situations young players face today.

Even more so because there are so many more musicians out there with even fewer paying gigs! I mean, what can a drummer offer besides playing the drums to make himself more valuable and less replaceable? It is something to think about!

Mike

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Even more so because there are so many more musicians out there with even fewer paying gigs! I mean, what can a drummer offer besides playing the drums to make himself more valuable and less replaceable? It is something to think about!

Maybe, but throughout my life there have always been more musicians than there were gigs. The difference between then and now is that then there weren't all that many really good musicians, not at the level I was aiming at, so the ones who were good were the ones who got and kept the gigs. This was in the early seventies.

These days, damn! There are technically brilliant drummers growing on trees, it seems, playing things that would have been unthinkable back then. The competition, it must be fierce. It's a whole new game now, this whole music scene, and from where I sit it looks really, really tough to get into.

To answer your question with a question, what more is there for a professional drummer to do than to make himself more valuable and less replaceable?
 
Yes, you should believe everything you read on Wikipedia.

Mike

I understand that wikipedia might have errors. But it was quoting World Health Organization and not erroneously, so don't attack wikipedia. Like you propably know more about playing drums than me, WHO propably knows more about health systems than you (I think they had some pretty nice criteria they based their evaluation on, maybe give it a read sometime?). But even then it's all opinion, even your theories. That's all I'm saying. Don't be so angry at people.
 
Sorry, if this seems like it has an obvious answer, but What are healthcare options for musicians?
I have always worked for a company that provided insurance as a benefit, with them sharing the cost. I am able to work less at the day job now & gigging is becoming more of my income to the point where I can play full time in the coming year. This thread has given me some insight on things I need to do that are normally provided by work but may not be there for awhile.

If you go back over the thread, there has been some discussion of this. I'm partly responsible for the ongoing sidetracks due to a flippant remark I made about "civilised countries" and the existence or lack of public healthcare. That one seems to stir the hornets' nest every time. I know better, but I do it anyway... ;)

The point is that your options are going to be different depending on your location and what sort of work you're doing. For instance, in the UK we have the National Health Service as a service provided to all and sundry. For musicians specifically, the union offers certain base-level coverage and access to a corporate rate for extended coverage based on membership. However, they don't "co-pay" like a big corporation might, which leaves most the cost of extended coverage to the individual. Of course, there are also plenty of private firms - i.e. Blue Cross, etc. - offering private healthcare coverage.

You'll need to research what's available to you where you're at. Depending on the kind of work you do, it might be possible to organise a group rate with other musicians if you were all - for instance - working for the same record company or studio or production company, though that could be difficult. You may simply need to bite the bullet and fork out the cost of individual private coverage at whatever level you can afford, and factor that into your living costs.

If you're young, single, reasonably healthy and don't have dependents or mortgages and that sort of thing, the rates can be fairly reasonable, because you may just want a policy that covers certain aspects of healthcare in the event of accident or illness stopping you working. If you don't have to take care of beneficiaries, there's really no need to go out and spend a tonne on life insurance, etc. The more responsibilities you have, the more insurance you'll need to ensure things keep ticking over in the event of a problem. And remember that insurance is basically the insurance company betting on the odds of you having something terrible happen, so costs are always lower for young, healthy people because of the obvious statistics.

There are companies that have specific plans set up for musicians that are a package of health, accident/indemnity and instrument theft/loss cover. Some might even throw travel and car insurance in. Luckily, it looks as though you're internet-capable, and there is plenty of information/comparison shopping to be done via the web. Or, you can simply call up an insurance company, tell them your situation and see what they can offer you.
 
What happens in the US if you are seriously ill and can't afford either the insurance or the treatment? I imagine some struggling musos trying to get established would face this.

Even if you have insurance and need treatment, the insurance will only pay for what your policy covers. So your still screwed.

Sorry everyone for jumping off of topic.
 
Even if you have insurance and need treatment, the insurance will only pay for what your policy covers. So your still screwed.

Sorry everyone for jumping off of topic.

As noted above, it's not really off topic. We've probably spent an inordinate amount of time on it, but it's an important issue facing anyone working in a freelance, self-employed capacity.

A related trouble is budgeting for things like insurance and other ongoing costs when income fluctuates. I go through wet and dry periods and if there is anything I recommend to guys trying to get started as pros, it's get a handle on how to keep track of your finances and run on a budget. If you aren't naturally inclined toward that sort of organisation (I'm certainly not) there are tools available to help - i.e. software, etc. A good accountant, or someone who's good with money and numbers can be a boon to have around as well. But whether you're teaching or playing as a primary source of income, it's imperative you get some basic financial planning going on. I don't know how many times I've heard of guys getting caught owing big tax bills, etc. because they weren't cognisant of how all of that works. As I said before, I'm not naturally a really organised person, so it's been a long work in progress to keep some of this stuff under control.
 
Even if you have insurance and need treatment, the insurance will only pay for what your policy covers. So your still screwed.

You can be screwed if you have insurance and your policy covers exactly the thing you have- the company can cancel your policy if you get sick by looking for errors in your application- even minor ones, whether or not they're related to the current problem, or even if they were made by you. Or they can just straight up refuse to pay.

Thanks to the new health care reform act, the practice of canceling your policy when you get sick (called rescission) is actually supposed to be banned starting today.. I don't have a lot of faith in the companies following the letter or spirit of the law, however.
 
The healthcare system in the United States is the best healthcare system in world. This explains why the Prince of Egypt brought his son to the biggest hospital in Oklahoma to get a very badly needed procedure. (...)

The phrase is the "Peart rulez!" of health care discussion. It's calculated to end all thought in the mind of the person uttering it, which is why you hear it propagated endlessly by corporate shills (nothing personal, Skitch- I'm sure you're a great guy, but that's the reality). Health care in the US is best in the world in the same way that the Dodge Viper is the best car in the world- it provides wonderful top-of-the-line performance for those who can afford it, and makes a nice profit for the manufacturer. We'll leave alone the possibility that there are cars that fulfill that function better than the Viper. But if what you mean by "best" is "reliably serves the needs of the largest number of people"- like a Honda Civic or even a Fiat 500- well, it's not so hot.


Free - no and nothing in life is ever free. Best, yes! And if the insurance companies were deregulated like the airlines were in 1980, all 1600(!) insurance companies could compete in all 50 states and rates would go down and health insurance premiums would drop.

Implementing that corporatist pipe (or other kind of) dream is not going to help anyone but the health insurance companies.
 
Great post, Todd. I think I may be going out on a limb, but in my view this points to the relation of music and health care.

What you are essentially arguing is that it doesn't matter how great health care is in a country if people can't access it. So in theory, if you had all the money in the world, you may find that many of the greatest health care professionals and institutions are here in the grand ole USA. But this does nothing for the masses of people who don't have or can't access health care, never mind the carte blanch supreme health care that unlimited funds can access regardless of where it is. Now the argument is also that because we have this great health care that is available to the the few, there is a trickle down affect through new treatments and pharmaceuticals that benefits all mankind. But again if people can't access it, then it doesn't matter.

I think it is the way we do music in this country. The system is geared to generate massive careers and profits for the few, while the profits gathered from the success of the mighty, trickle down to those on the bottom to invest in those works that are never going to generate a profit, and certainly not the profits that many of the big labels need. The hope for the internet is that it will turn that around by offering more access to the fan base for those musicians who can network well and build a following. They now have a resource to do that outside of the mainstream. Certainly, the internet has democratized the ability for access

Truthfully, I have found that musicians tend not to have those kind of networking skills. The type of mentality that keeps you locked in a 12 by 8 for five hours practicing is not the guy who then goes out and becomes the life of the party.
 
Thanks everyone for all the info. I am just trying to cover as many bases as possible before I jump in. No political themes were intended.
 
The phrase is the "Peart rulez!" of health care discussion. It's calculated to end all thought in the mind of the person uttering it, which is why you hear it propagated endlessly by corporate shills (nothing personal, Skitch- I'm sure you're a great guy, but that's the reality). Health care in the US is best in the world in the same way that the Dodge Viper is the best car in the world- it provides wonderful top-of-the-line performance for those who can afford it, and makes a nice profit for the manufacturer. We'll leave alone the possibility that there are cars that fulfill that function better than the Viper. But if what you mean by "best" is "reliably serves the needs of the largest number of people"- like a Honda Civic or even a Fiat 500- well, it's not so hot.




Implementing that corporatist pipe (or other kind of) dream is not going to help anyone but the health insurance companies.

Actually, history will prove me right as when the airlines were deregulated in the 1980s in the US, profitability went because more people could afford to fly because there was less government invovlement and less beauracratic red tape. And we're talking about maybe ten major airlines, right?

There are actually 1,600 health-related insurance companies in the United States but they aren't allow to compete against each other because of government mandates and state governent mandates. Here is that great entity, the government, getting involved with all the efficiency of the post office. Great, isn't it.

If the mandates were done away with, and each individual were allowed to buy his or her own health insurance, those premiums would go down because of competition. And health care would get better. The problem is that the government, who wants to control everyone's lives, won't get out of the way so that, instead of having to buy health insurance as a group like a company does, it becomes more affordable for the individual to buy health insurance, much the same way you would buy insurance for your car.

Do you ever wonder why Tobacco isn't outlawed in the United States? It isn't because of big Tobacco companies; it is because the US government would completely collapse if it didn't have the "Sin" tax revenues from all of the taxes on cigarettes.

You can post links to any story you want; that same magazine was touting global cooling in 1980. My only question to them was which time did they lie?

Bottom line, if you want the government telling you what kind of healthcare you can have, good for you. I'm like Frank Zappa; I want the government out of my life and off my back! Alll the government does is suck the life out of anything it touches and screws it up with rules and regulations to help give people who are pretty much wrothless for any other kind of work, a job.


But I guess it's only free thought as long as you sieg heil to whatever the "typical artist" mentality is at the moment.

Mike

http://www.mikemccraw.com
http://www.dominoretroplate.com
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http://www.facebook.com/mike.mccraw
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemccraw
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Everyone loves to complain about government but the biggest problem with government as far as I can tell is - like everything else - it's controlled by big biz. We don't actually live in a democracy - it's a feudal system run by our mogul overlords with a democratic outer layer which is mostly for show. Dig a little and you'll see who's really pulling the strings behind policy decisions. Murdoch once boasted that there's never been a government in power that he didn't want there ...

Bear in mind that big biz eats small businesspeople (like musicians) for breakfast. Gigs are drying up in Sydney but the gaming machine companies are making record profits ...

Not saying that big biz is bad per se ... it is what it is. Just that when a body achieves enough power then it's only human to use it.
 
Reading this stuff makes being a pro musician sound a bit scary if things don't go your way often enough. All this health care talk, I think I'm lucky to be pretty safe here in Australia. There's probably a fair chance that even if I do get into University (just had my auditon...find out in about 6 weeks =D) and do well there, I won't have a successful career in music. But honestly, when I think about doing anything else, giving my best at being a pro musician is something that I have to do for myself. About money, health, relationships (or relationship), security, it will either fall into place or I will force it into place.

Truthfully, I have found that musicians tend not to have those kind of networking skills. The type of mentality that keeps you locked in a 12 by 8 for five hours practicing is not the guy who then goes out and becomes the life of the party.

Just sort of funny you mention this...while I'm not up to 5 hours a day I would rather do hours on a pad than go to a party. But when it counts, I don't think that will affect my networking skills.
 
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