Before 2010’s Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, Kelley Deal didn’t have health insurance. As someone with a pre-existing condition, getting insured was prohibitively expensive for the Breeders guitarist, who has more recently recorded as R. Ring. “This is the first time I ever had insurance, as a self-employed, single woman,” Deal says in a video from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, premiering today on Pitchfork. “And it feels really good.”
So good, in fact, that Deal headed to Washington, D.C., on Monday, January 9, to help fight against GOP efforts to repeal the law. Among other reforms, the ACA bans insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, allows children to stay on a parent’s plan up to age 26, and sets up online exchanges to make it easier for the uninsured to buy coverage. The law also blocks insurers from imposing lifetime and annual coverage limits. Repeal would leave more than 20 million Americans facing the loss of their health-care coverage, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Deal, who joined HHS secretary Sylvia Burwell for the department chief’s final speech, isn’t the only artist sharing her Obamacare story as Republicans work to dismantle a law that House Speaker Paul Ryan last week asserted had “failed.” Tomorrow (January 12), the agency Burwell leads will launch a “day of action” encouraging artists to tell how Obamacare has affected them. Along with Deal, musicians participating include Superchunk, Spoon, the Mountain Goats, Lambchop, and Rebecca Gates, along with the Future of Music Coalition, a nonprofit group focusing on advocacy for musicians. That’s amidst HHS’s #CoverageMatters campaign, through which hundreds of Americans have already shared their health care tales.
Burwell, in her speech, warned of “stark” consequences if Congress repeals Obamacare without enacting a full replacement. Later, she hammers home the particular importance of the ACA to musicians, artists, independent entrepreneurs, and others who making a living off their ideas. “You don’t have to do something you might not want to have to do just to get health coverage,” she tells Pitchfork. As she puts it, Obamacare both lowered the uninsured rate among musicians and cleared the way for aspiring artists to pursue their music in a way they couldn’t before without risking their insurance.
One goal for the health department’s day of action tomorrow is to move the conversation about Obamacare toward the reality of what the law means in actual, everyday lives. “What we’re trying do is have the American people’s voice be heard, and what better way to do that than musicians—who have great voices in lots of different ways,” Burwell says with a chuckle. “Our Thursday’s artists’ day of action is focused on having a place for people to go and having that voice be heard. And right now, I think we are starting to hear that voice.”
Adding to the hue and cry against Obamacare’s repeal is Laura Ballance, bassist in Superchunk and co-founder of Merge Records. She tells me she got involved in the health department’s initiative because before ACA it was tough for artists to find health coverage. “It always concerned me that most of the artists on Merge were not covered,” Ballance says. Now, many of them have insurance through Obamacare, including some who previously could be denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. “It has been a relief to know that all these people have had some security and peace of mind,” she adds. “You can play benefit shows all day long, but they are not going to cover the average hospital bill.”
Betsy Wright, bassist in Ex Hex, knows all too well the costs of medical care. She has suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since she was about 20, and without the proper medication (which without insurance can cost roughly $2,000 to $4,000 a month) she sometimes isn’t able to walk, let alone play an instrument. Because of that pre-existing condition, before the ACA she had to have a full-time job all the time to get health insurance. Since enrolling through one of Obamacare’s exchanges, she has been playing in bands, teaching music lessons, and making her living doing what she wants to do. “I was able to go on tour!” she tells Pitchfork. “I would never have been able to do that had I not had the Affordable Care Act.” She’s worried that losing the ACA would mean she’d have to give up touring and playing in bands just to be sure she has work with health coverage. “It’s kind of a bummer,” she adds dryly.
Elsewhere in Wright’s Washington hometown, the fate of the Obama administration’s signature health reform isn’t yet sealed. On Tuesday, HHS announced that more than 11.5 million people were enrolled in ACA plans on federal and state insurance exchanges as of December 24, up almost 300,000 from a year earlier. At the same time, the Kaiser Foundation released a report showing that roughly 6.3 million ACA enrollees live in districts with Republican congressional representatives, while 5.2 million live in Democratic districts.
President-elect Donald Trump, as has been widely reported, has called for repealing and replacing Obamacare, though the details are unclear. Also on Tuesday, as The Hill reports, Paul Ryan told fellow Republicans he planned to vote Friday on a Senate-approved budget that would begin ACA repeal. But he has opposition within his own party—on Monday night, five Senate Republicans proposed an amendment that would postpone Obamacare repeal until March.
As for her visit with ACA defender Kelley Deal, Burwell says “she was terrific—and you know what, she wore her father’s tie from West Virginia.” The health department secretary, who like the parents of Deal and her identical twin sister Kim Deal was born and raised in the Mountain State, appreciated that gesture, but admits she hasn’t necessarily delved deeply into the Breeders catalog: “I am very hopeful that in nine days, my ability to reconnect with music, my children, my husband, and about everything else will occur.” In the meantime, there are millions of Americans whose health care coverage depends on what happens to this long-debated piece of legislation.
