With a\u00a0Grammy win\u00a0for best new artist, Chappell Roan is at a career high. A few years ago, she was one of the millions of Americans without a job or\u00a0health insurance.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels, and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists, would offer a livable wage and health care, especially to developing artists,\u201d she said at the\u00a0Grammy awards show\u00a0in Los Angeles on Feb. 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got dropped, I had zero job experience under my belt. And like most people, I had a difficult time finding a job in the pandemic and could not afford health insurance,\u201d she said in her acceptance speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf my label would have prioritized artists\u2019 health, I could\u2019ve been provided care by a company I was giving everything to. So, record labels need to treat their artists as valuable employees with a livable wage and health insurance and protection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roan, whose given name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz,\u00a0was released from her record label in 2020. That\u2019s the same year a huge spike in\u00a0unemployment\u00a0resulted in an estimated 1.6 million to 3.3 million people losing coverage through their employers, according to the Health and Human Services Department.<\/p>\n
At the time, coverage expansions put in place by the Affordable Care Act acted as a safety net for those experiencing coverage disruptions.<\/p>\n
That government-backed aid significantly lowered the costs of coverage for people buying health insurance plans on\u00a0the ACA marketplace. Those customers include anyone who doesn\u2019t have access to a workplace plan, such as self-employed individuals like musicians, as well as students and the unemployed, among others.<\/p>\n
Gains in Medicaid and marketplace coverage have contributed to\u00a0significant declines\u00a0in the uninsured rate, according to KFF, a nonprofit formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the Affordable Care Act, there\u2019s a health care safety net for artists who previously had none,\u201d said Larry Levitt,\u00a0KFF\u2019s\u00a0executive vice president for health policy. The ACA also guarantees insurance for pre-existing conditions and subsidizes premiums based on income, he said.<\/p>\n
Yet, there can still be challenges for artists in getting health insurance if their recording labels don\u2019t provide it, according to Levitt.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf income is volatile, premiums can fluctuate and be unpredictable because subsidies are based on actual income for the year,\u201d Levitt said. \u201cSo an artist who has no income for a period of time can be left with no viable health insurance options.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes it really hard, especially for starving artists,\u201d said Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner based in Jacksonville, Florida.<\/p>\n
Jeff Rabhan, the former chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts, said in a guest column in The Hollywood Reporter that \u201cRoan\u2019s call for record labels to pay artists a livable wage and provide health care was noble \u2014 but also wildly misinformed.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the\u00a0column, published Feb. 5, Rabhan said \u201cif labels are responsible for artists\u2019 wages, health care and overall well-being, where does it end and personal responsibility begin?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShould artists have better health-care options? Absolutely,\u201d Rabhan said in the column. \u201cSounds like a union thing to me. Most independent managers don\u2019t have insurance, either \u2014 it\u2019s a flaw in the industry at large, not just on the label side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since those in the music industry are often paid as independent contractors, that makes it more likely they will forgo coverage, according to McClanahan, founder of Life Planning Partners and a member of the\u00a0CNBC Financial Advisor Council.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, many are not part of a union and are on their own in getting health insurance,\u201d she said. \u201cSadly, many self-employed people don\u2019t understand the Affordable Care Act and how to obtain insurance on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even today, there are about\u00a025 million uninsured Americans, KFF research shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the country is involved in [an] employer\/employee relationship where the company is responsible for their wages, health care, and some care about your well-being. However, most artists don\u2019t have this luxury and don\u2019t understand they are basically running their own business,\u201d McClanahan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least give them the tools.\u201d<\/p>\n
CNBC\u2019s attempts to reach Roan for comment were not successful, but Roan responded to Rabhan on Instagram by saying she donated $25,000 to support \u201cstruggling dropped artists.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With a\u00a0Grammy win\u00a0for best new artist, Chappell Roan is at a career high. A few years ago, she was one of the millions of Americans without a job or\u00a0health insurance. \u201cI told myself that if I ever won a Grammy and got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14757,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}