The Daily Swarm

Chicago Tribune:

In America, we’re taught to believe that big ideas and entrepreneurship are good things, but it does you little good if you can’t strike out on your own to pursue them in a competitive marketplace. And the lack of affordable, portable health insurance is, at its heart, anti-competitive. Say you’re working for a big company but you’ve got your own innovation that you want to develop. Yet you can’t break out on your own, because your family would lose its health insurance coverage. Your great idea is locked up.

The same goes for musicians. Even if artists have something incredible to offer, they are often forced to stay in a job where—if they’re lucky—they have stable coverage. This isn’t particularly beneficial to employers; someone else could probably use that job, and it’s terrible for musicians. This strategy of tying health insurance to employers has affected the entire economy, not to mention the free flow of ideas. Hindering entrepreneurship is hardly an American virtue. At least, it shouldn’t be.

It’s clear that this problem extends well beyond the creative class. Still, there’s plenty to be learned from musicians, who are essentially freelance or contract employees. Artists’ paydays are contingent on a number of variables, from door count at a concert to merchandise sales. In some ways, they aren’t all that different from freelance Web professionals or software coders, who also go from “gig to gig”—often without the benefit of consistent health coverage. Artists lucky enough to have a record deal fare no better, as they are not able to get health insurance through their label—even if the company wanted to provide it—because the musicians are independent contractors and are therefore not considered record company employees.