How To Register For Sag Health Insurance
SAG-AFTRA Members Complain of Changes in Health Insurance
The American union for professional film and Idiot box actors told members on Midweek that it would tighten eligibility requirements and enhance premiums. A petition opposing the motility has been started.
More than viii,500 people have signed a petition asking the health plan of SAG-AFTRA, the American spousal relationship for professional person film and goggle box actors, to reverse changes that volition result in some members no longer qualifying for health insurance.
The health plan said in an email information technology sent to members on Wednesday night that information technology would raise the floor for eligibility from those earning $xviii,040 a year to $25,950, effective Jan. 1. Premiums will as well increase.
"The Trustees of the SAG-AFTRA Health Program have taken a hard but necessary action to accost financial deficits facing the programme," the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Goggle box and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Wellness Plan said in a statement.
At a fourth dimension when film jobs are scarce and live theater is almost completely shut down because of the pandemic, many actors have seen their income boring to a trickle or disappear entirely.
"Every thespian in America is stuck right now," John Eastward. Brady, a film, goggle box, and commercials player who has been a union member for more than 30 years, said. "Unless yous're Tom Hanks and accept done a body of work you lot'll continue to get residual checks from, you lot're non going to be able to afford insurance."
According to the e-mail, the changes are in response to projected deficits of $141 million this year and $83 million in 2021. The wellness programme estimated that, without the changes, it would run out of reserves past 2024.
The SAG-AFTRA Wellness Plan said increased health care costs and the shutdown of the alive entertainment industry contributed to its conclusion to tighten the requirements.
Brady said he will not be eligible for insurance when the eligibility cutoff increases. "When I read the email, I went into consummate denial," he said. "I just idea, 'In that location goes my insurance.'"
Brady said the changes were "particularly pernicious" considering his wife, a breast cancer and brain tumor survivor, has 3 pre-existing conditions. And Brady, 58, had a pulmonary embolism last twelvemonth. "We're non immature bound chickens," he said.
The union had previously offered ii health care plans. The lower-threshold program had offered coverage to members who made at least $18,040 per year, and the higher-threshold plan, which offered meliorate coverage, had been available to those who made at to the lowest degree $35,020. Nether the new combined plan, the threshold will be $25,950.
The new programme includes several other changes. Spouses who are offered health insurance by their employer will no longer exist eligible for coverage under the spousal relationship plan. Members who are 65 or older who take recently retired will no longer be allowed to employ their residuals income to qualify for the new threshold. And the new health plan eliminates the out-of-pocket maximum for out-of-network coverage.
SAG-AFTRA represents approximately 160,000 actors, singers, journalists and other media professionals in film and television. Membership is considered a rite of passage that can lead to more prestigious work. A spokeswoman for the union wellness plan declined comment on how many members might be affected past the changes.
Nick Sullivan, an player who has been a member of the union since the mid-1990s, said the changes striking peculiarly difficult during a yr when many actors accept trivial or no piece of work. "Nosotros're hearing nigh this in mid-August, during a year that nigh all motion picture and Goggle box has been close down," Sullivan said. "It'southward jaw-dropping."
He said the style the union wellness plan delivered the news was tone-deaf. "They thought the best way to tell us would be in a newsletter with stock photos of smiling people," he said. "Anyone looking at those numbers knew what destructive modify we were looking at moving into the future. It was enraging."
Dave Dillon, a Dallas-based insurance actuary who reviewed the changes, said members appeared to be heavy users of out-of-network providers, and that benefit reductions were likely made to entice them to seek in-network providers to reduce costs.
But he said that health plan costs are more often than not not increasing as a event of the pandemic and have gone down in many cases because of eliminated and deferred care. "My educated speculation is that SAG-AFTRA has had backlog costs that are not related to the pandemic in any way and these changes are to accost that," he said.
Brady said he thinks there might have been a less drastic course of action bachelor. "I sympathise that they're strapped," he said. "Merely I'thousand more concerned with how I stay eligible for insurance so that my wife doesn't die."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/arts/television/sag-actors-health-insurance.html
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