{"id":9904,"date":"2025-02-09T12:49:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-09T12:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=9904"},"modified":"2025-02-09T12:49:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-09T12:49:58","slug":"chappell-roan-was-one-of-the-25-million-uninsured-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=9904","title":{"rendered":"Chappell Roan was one of the 25 million uninsured Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chappell Roan at the 67th GRAMMY Awards held at the Crypto.com Arena on Feb. 2, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.<\/p>\n

Christopher Polk | Billboard | Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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With a Grammy win<\/a> for 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 health insurance.<\/p>\n

“I 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,” she said at the Grammy awards show<\/a> in Los Angeles on Feb. 2.<\/p>\n

“When 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,” she said in her acceptance speech.<\/p>\n

“If my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could’ve 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.”<\/p>\n

More from Personal Finance:
<\/strong>How Trump could change your health care
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Recession pop: How music hits on economic trends<\/p>\n

Roan, whose given name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz,\u00a0was released from her record label in 2020. That’s the same year a huge spike in unemployment resulted 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<\/a>. Those customers include anyone who doesn’t have access to a workplace plan, such as self-employed individuals like musicians, as well as students and the unemployed, among others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>‘Volatile’ income can make health coverage tricky<\/h2>\n
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Chappell Roan accepts the Best New Artist award onstage during the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on Feb. 2, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.<\/p>\n

Kevin Winter | Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Gains in Medicaid and marketplace coverage have contributed to significant declines in the uninsured rate, according to KFF, a nonprofit formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“With the Affordable Care Act, there’s a health care safety net for artists who previously had none,” said Larry Levitt,\u00a0KFF’s\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’t provide it, according to Levitt.<\/p>\n

“If income is volatile, premiums can fluctuate and be unpredictable because subsidies are based on actual income for the year,” Levitt said. “So an artist who has no income for a period of time can be left with no viable health insurance options.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It makes it really hard, especially for starving artists,” said Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner based in Jacksonville, Florida.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>‘A flaw in the industry at large’<\/h2>\n
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Jeff Rabhan, the former chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, said in a guest column in The Hollywood Reporter that “Roan’s call for record labels to pay artists a livable wage and provide health care was noble \u2014 but also wildly misinformed.”<\/p>\n

In the column<\/a>, published Feb. 5, Rabhan said “if labels are responsible for artists’ wages, health care and overall well-being, where does it end and personal responsibility begin?”<\/p>\n

“Should artists have better health-care options? Absolutely,” Rabhan said in the column. “Sounds like a union thing to me. Most independent managers don’t have insurance, either \u2014 it’s a flaw in the industry at large, not just on the label side.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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

“Unfortunately, many are not part of a union and are on their own in getting health insurance,” she said. “Sadly, many self-employed people don’t understand the Affordable Care Act and how to obtain insurance on their own.”<\/p>\n

Even today, there are about 25 million uninsured Americans<\/a>, KFF research shows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Most 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’t have this luxury and don’t understand they are basically running their own business,” McClanahan said.<\/p>\n

“At least give them the tools.”<\/p>\n

CNBC’s attempts to reach Roan for comment were not successful, but Roan responded to Rabhan on Instagram by saying she donated $25,000 to support “struggling dropped artists.”<\/p>\n

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chappell Roan at the 67th GRAMMY Awards held at the Crypto.com Arena on Feb. 2, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Christopher Polk | Billboard | Getty Images With a Grammy win for best new artist, Chappell Roan is at a career high. A few years ago, she was one of the millions of Americans without<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[1475,3942,156,3943,3944],"class_list":{"0":"post-9904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finance-news","8":"tag-americans","9":"tag-chappell","10":"tag-million","11":"tag-roan","12":"tag-uninsured"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}