Salon & michaelmoore.com: How Lack Of Health Insurance Kills Artists

[Hissyspit]

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/how-lack-health-insurance-kills-artists

February 12th, 2010 10:20 AM
How lack of health insurance kills artists



Artist Tom Fowler

By Cary Tennis / Salon

While I was in the MRI machine today, I thought of my friend Tom Fowler, the artist who died because of lack of health insurance.

The MRI machine was taking pictures of my lumbar region where a large sacral chordoma tumor was recently removed. Though the MRI machine is loud, I had taken some pills that cause drowsiness, so I was able to contemplate various things in a state of serenity. In this state of serenity, I contemplated how I was receiving the best medical care ever available at any time in history at any place on the planet. I contemplated the incredible genius of scientific research to which I owe my life.

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And I thought about how lucky I am that though I am a creative type and have been at times sort of a screw-up and have not at all played it safe and done the right things, I still somehow have health insurance and a place to live.

- snip -

When we creative people find we cannot easily fit into the work roles offered to us by our society, we face a choice. We can put aside our artistic calling and try to do the jobs that are offered to us. Or we can try to fashion for ourselves a life that suits our nature, enduring the insecurity and sacrifice that comes with such a choice.

Sometimes this choice comes after a painful life of trying to fit in, or trying to pretend that we do not really need to spend all day every day thinking about the color blue. That we do not really need to spend all day every day playing augmented and diminished scales on the cornet.

We pretend that we don't. But yes, we do.

It turns out that for whatever reason, that is what we need to do to be happy and productive. And then we say, OK, how do we do this and survive? We do not know. But we start out by just doing it and see where we can get.

A just and wise society would care for its artists. A just and wise society would recognize that on the margins of its norm live its geniuses, and though they are strange and sometimes difficult, they must be cared for, for they are the treasures of our time, and they produce the treasures of our time.

But our society is not just and wise. Still, the artists in our society choose to do their work and find a way to survive somehow, sacrificing things such as health insurance and paid time off.

That is what my friend Tom Fowler did. He admitted that he was an artist and the only true thing to do was to paint and see how he could get along. So he painted and saw how he could get along. He lived frugally but he did OK and some months he did well. He had shows at his place on Potrero. He had parties and stayed sober and played music. We collaborated on a piece for the Canvas Gallery on Lincoln and 9th, back before it was a fish restaurant. I gave him some prose from the novel I was and am perpetually working on, and he painted what he saw when he read the prose I gave him. Then the gallery had a show of such paintings. We attended the show. Afterward, the paintings that had not been sold to others we bought, because they were beautiful and true. Because they seemed to live inside the same landscape the novel lives in. We took them home and hung them up.

Then one day not too long after that we learned that Tom had died. He had gotten a toothache. He had gotten a toothache but had not gone to the dentist because he didn't have health insurance to pay for the dentist. He lived with it. Then he got sick but thought he was OK. Then he collapsed and the emergency medical people came and they told him he should go right into the hospital. But after reviving he said he'd be OK and he went home and made himself some soup. He lasted a couple of more days like that. Then he got really, really sick and they put him in the hospital but by that point the infection that had begun in a tooth had spread massively throughout his body and despite the doctors' best efforts Tom could not be saved.

MORE

http://hummingbirdminds.blogspot.com/2010/02/artist-dies-due-to-lack-of-health.html

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2010
Artist dies due to lack of health insurance

Artist Tom Fowler "died because he didn't go to the dentist and didn't go to the doctor because he was trying to be an artist and didn't have health insurance and didn't think it would kill him."

But it did. Writer Cary Tennis wrote about his artist friend's death yesterday in Salon. Read the full story (reposted on Michael Moore's site) at http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/how-lack-health-insurance-kills-artists

Tennis's main point is that artists need to create. Most of us artists and writers and performers work full-time jobs to support our habits. Those jobs have health insurance. Everyone should have health insurance but if you're a self-employed artist, it's too expensive -- even if you can qualify. Many artists live on the margins where health insurance doesn't exist.

"Get a job." That's what we used to yell out car windows at street people. I was a kid then and stupid, not realizing that that disheveled guy walking down the street could be a schizophrenic off his meds or a war veteran with PTSD or any number of things, including an itinerant artist. It can have been me or one of my rowdy friends. We could have been looking at our futures.

We appreciate the artist's work when it's hanging on our wall or playing on the iPod. But we don't appreciate the artist's struggle. Sure, on every Grammy telecast there's a millionaire performer telling the sad story about growing up on the streets but now he owns the street and all the houses on it. Great story. The artist struggled and made millions.

But the majority of artists in the U.S. don't even make minimum wage. They don't have health insurance. It might not matter when they're young, but youth fades into the infirmities of age. And then, in this country, you die.

MORE

[Tansy_Gold]

1. K & R from a sometimes artist who has a boring gig for survival

but even so has no health insurance at all.



Tansy Gold, KMFX

[The Doctor.]

2. This is the cause of my life.

I cannot now be specific because I am working on something tremendous... but the philosophy of fear and insecurity must become a thing of the past.

Prosperity is not the curse, but the cure. There are those who believe otherwise.

I need people who understand.

I'd hoped Mr. Moore believed, but my attempts go unanswered.


This OP cuts straight to something those in power cannot grasp, so they must be put out of the equation.


I have the formula.

[femrap]

3. Our culture is

so cruel. We stifle beauty, imagination, and creativity. Violence is honored.

I think of people who stay in jobs they hate because they have health insurance and their families need it. These people want to do something else with their lives but they are caged.

We must have a Public Option.

[UpInArms]

4. uia - who has no insurance

who has lived on the fringe for 20 years, knowing that anything would wipe me out, now worrying because of a toothache that I have been ignoring

[The Doctor.]

5. Get it checked.

Screw the concern over affordability... unless you're worried about your credit.

If your credit is great, then you won't have to worry.

If it's not so great, then just get it checked anyway. A check-up is rarely more than a couple hundred anyway... and at the very least you'll be told what you have to do.

There are thousands of dentists. Many of them bill you after your visit... especially if you explain that you get paid 'at the first of the month' if they actually ask.

[AdHocSolver]

6. Check if there is a dental school in your area that sees patients. Do have it checked!

If there is an infection associated with your tooth ache, that could seriously affect your health.

At least, a dentist could give you a prescription for antibiotics. Generic antibiotics can be purchased for no more than $10.00 per prescription.

An abscessed tooth can be debilitatingly painful, and a runaway infection can seriously damage your health.

A dental school will schedule patients to give their students practice in doing procedures under the supervision of the professors. They have discretion to adjust fees according to your situation.

Some medical schools have the same practice.