Plain Sense Economics

Hundreds of supporters attended and performed at two benefit concerts this weekend here in Ashland. The money was being raised to help a local, beloved musical leader who has a degenerative and terminal neurological disease. The efforts will probably raise well in excess of $20,000. That won’t come near to paying his accumulated medical bills, but will make a good dent in them.

As I was sitting and watching the concerts I was impressed by the wide range of talent represented on the stage. There were performers from every corner of the music world, and here in Southern Oregon that world is breathtakingly broad and rich. Yet, I bet that very few of those performers have health insurance. The recipient of all this support is widely known and extremely active. He conducts/directs at least three large choral groups, gives music lessons, and performs both on his own and with groups. None of those choral organizations, though, provide health insurance – so he has none, despite being at the pinnacle of activity and visibility in our valley. I thought about all of those talented performers who were sharing their talents and enriching our community, while leading those (as Thoreau put it) “lives of quiet desperation” – cobbling together a living from countless gigs, lessons, and the occasional minimum wage job.  These people are very different from the images of the uninsured that we conjure up when reading policy papers on healthcare reform.

In terms of cultural support Ashland is unusually generous. We are the home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which has an acting corps and production company of 500 souls. Rare in the theater industry OSF operates in reperetory for 10 months of the year, with contracts that run from 6 – 10 months. And in most cases those company members are given health insurance benefits – unlike their colleagues even in other parts of Ashland who perform or support the several other “off-Bardway” venues. And we have a medium-size university and a hospital and city government and school district, all of whom provide insurance benefits. At a rough guess, though, those top five employers (OSF, SOU, Hospital, City, Schools) probably employ less than 20 percent of the Ashland households. Other than these our biggest economic base is tourism, supported by retail and service jobs all earning low wages, and seldom with health insurance.

This is why we need universal coverage.