Actor and singer Cheyenne Jackson, who has starred on Broadway and had roles in dozens of TV series including “American Horror Story,” “30 Rock” and “Glee,” never considered that he might lose his health insurance.
But at a grim moment last year, he realized he was thousands of dollars short of the SAG-AFTRA minimum health care eligibility of about $28,000 a year, the actors’ union. Otherwise, he would lose the plan that covers his husband and their 11-year-old twins.
“The audition didn’t come. It was just a very, very difficult time,” Jackson said. “I guess I just took my insurance for granted. I thought this was always going to happen.”
Jackson and other actors have spoken publicly about the difficulty of qualifying for SAG-AFTRA health care amid a backdrop of declining film and television production in Hollywood, an exodus of film jobs, job losses from industry consolidation and concerns about the intrusion of artificial intelligence.
Jackson reflected on the experience during a stopover at the Atlanta airport on Sunday for his solo music show, the Midlife Torso Tour. He decided to follow other underpaid union members on social media. He said he received hundreds of messages within 24 hours of posting about his idea for the project on Instagram.
Jackson thanked his friend Kathy Bates for helping him through last year. Kathy Bates, his co-star on American Horror Story Season 4, is an Oscar and Emmy winner. He texted her describing his dilemma. Within five minutes, he recalled, she called him back and told him: “I have good news and bad news.”
The good news, she explains, is that she’s offered him a role in CBS’s reboot of the ’80s legal drama “Matlock,” in which she plays a brilliant criminal defense attorney. The bad news is that he only has four lines, and his character doesn’t have a name.
“I was like, ‘Sign me up!'” Jackson said. “I’m just grateful that I showed up and got my four lines done.”
Bates “really paid a price,” he said.
Actors’ health insurance plans are typically administered by performing arts unions rather than by a single corporate employer. Producers and studios contribute to the Shared Health Fund based on union contracts, wages and hours worked. If workers accumulate a preset number of hours or payments, they are eligible for coverage for up to one year.
But the drought and uncertainty in the industry caused by shutdowns and industry strikes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted how actors are trying to maintain insurance amid reduced workloads. Stories abounded a few years ago about actors losing their health insurance due to heart attacks or cancer treatments, and actors have expressed concerns again in recent months.
“I Saw the Light of TV” star Jack Haven posted a video on YouTube in September, saying they were “in some kind of emergency situation.” Haven said they need to make $4,000 by the end of the month to maintain coverage. In the video, Harvin says they “can do almost any job.”
This month, former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell of “Drake & Josh” posted a screenshot of the SAG-AFTRA health plan website, showing he would need to make about $11,450 more to qualify.
“Don’t be an actor. Don’t join the Screen Actors Guild,” Bale wrote in the post, using a middle finger emoji and tagging union president Sean Astin.
SAG-AFTRA spokesperson Pamela Greenwalt did not respond to a request for comment. But unions have long been open about the financial impact of the pandemic and other industry headwinds that have reduced employer contributions.
In December 2020, a group of SAG-AFTRA members sued the union’s board of directors over health plan changes. Pensioned actors aged 65 and over can no longer count residual income towards the annual threshold. A provision that would have allowed actors over 40 with 10 years of acting experience to qualify for coverage at a reduced level of $13,000 a year was also eliminated.
The union acknowledged new challenges during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s national executive director, told The Times that year that earning enough to qualify for Medicare had become “a real source of anxiety and concern for many members.”
Astin addressed members’ frustrations with financial pressures in a recorded speech at the union’s national council meeting at its Miracle Mile offices over the weekend, saying the union was using “every tool at our disposal to ensure that working performers have a place no matter how the industry evolves.”
It can take years for members to build up enough union work to qualify for health insurance. Some people who have been in the industry for years have never done this. According to reports, only about 14% of the union’s 160,000 members are eligible for the union’s health care services. SAG-AFTRA’s membership also includes dancers, DJs, journalists and radio hosts, with more than 100,000 of its members being actors and performers.
Miller Tai, a voice actor in Paramount+’s new animated film “Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender,” said he joined the union in 2017 and has not struggled to meet the minimum wage in recent years and has been eligible for the past seven years. He believes the noise on social media masks the real problem: a broken health care industry that hurts not just actors, but everyone else.
“We have a greedy system that raises prices every second,” Tai said. “This is a problem for any industry where we rely on our employers to provide health care.”
In 2027, the minimum income will rise to $28,933. Quarterly premiums will rise from $375 to $390 for one participant and higher for adding dependents. According to the union’s website, actors with certain credits who lose eligibility can temporarily receive health insurance at a lower price for up to 18 months through a federal program called COBRA.
Jackson said starting over every year is difficult and unpredictable, even for someone like him who has been on many TV shows and “is doing OK on residual income.” He said that while he might make $300,000 a year from acting, next year he might earn closer to 5 percent of that amount. He said that this year he made up the minimum income by taking on more commercial performances and starring in a vertically shot mini-drama.
“I ended up doing something I had never done before and never thought I would do,” Jackson said.
Jackson’s social media plan now has a home on Instagram called “One Job Away,” which he started posting Tuesday morning. He said his assistant manager and others on his team are combing through requests. More than a dozen photos of actors have been posted, with captions listing the amount they need to earn minimum income and describing their past credits.
“To me, saying I’m struggling and I need to find my next job doesn’t seem like a big deal,” he said. “But I understand why a lot of people don’t want to say that. They don’t want to seem needy or look anything like that. I do understand, but I think the more we talk about it, the less shame and shame around it because it’s just yes is happening. “