In August, the Alliance had the opportunity to join forces with its national arts organization peers to sign on to a statement calling for health care reform that takes into consideration the millions of uninsured individuals in the U.S. Artists have long fallen through the cracks of the current system, as many are self-employed or work in jobs that do not provide insurance. Additionally, soaring healthcare costs are consuming the ever-shrinking budgets of nonprofit arts organizations hit hard by today's economic recession.

The statement, issued by Americans for the Arts and co-signed by 20 arts service organizations, calls for reform that does the following:

• Creates a public health insurance option for individual artists, especially the uninsured, and create better choices for affordable access to universal health coverage without being denied because of pre-existing conditions.
• Helps financially-strapped nonprofit arts organizations reduce the skyrocketing health insurance costs to cover their employees without cuts to existing benefits and staff while the economy recovers. These new cost-savings could also enable nonprofit arts organizations to produce and present more programs to serve their communities.
• Enables smaller nonprofit and unincorporated arts groups to afford to cover part and full-time employees for the first time.
• Supports arts in healthcare programs, which have shown to be effective methods of prevention and patient care.

In recent weeks, this statement has come under attack, both for its content and for false accusations that the arts organizations are promoting a specific plan of President Obama's. Additionally, the National Endowment for the Arts has been attacked for its role, even though the statement was issued by Americans for the Arts and co-signed by other nonprofit organizations, all of which are independent from the NEA. Accusations have been made that those that signed on to the statement did so because they received funding from the NEA, and that the NEA was leveraging its influence to promote Obama's plans. The Alliance is proud to have signed on to the statment (as it has advocated for artist-friendly health care reform in the past), and proud to have received NEA funding (as it has in the past), unrelated as they are. (The Washington Times falsely claims that the Alliance received stimulus funds from the NEA; we did not.) Read more about the Washington Times editorial criticizing the statement.

The Alliance has long advocated for health care reform that recognizes the high number of uninsured artists and other individuals, as well as the financial burden on nonprofits and other small businesses to provide insurance to their employees. (You can read a March 2009 issue brief which the Alliance supported in face-to-face visits to Congrees.) Our interest is not partisan, nor has it changed with a change in administration. This is not a new battle, and it is one we will continue to fight. We are encouraged by organizations such as Fractured Atlas, Artist Trust, and others who are addressing artists' health insurance needs, and we look forward to continuing to advocate on behalf of artists and nonprofit arts organizations in all the years to come.

You can let your elected officials know that you believe artists and arts organizations ought to have better and more affordable health coverage, through Americans for the Arts' Arts Action Center.