New Orleans artists without health insurance get help from program
Dan Tague, a New Orleans artist, remembers a time about 10 years ago when he went to a local health clinic to get his lungs checked out. He’d been having trouble breathing and, thinking his symptoms might be related to a serious health problem associated with some chemicals inhaled in the studio, figured he should seek medical help.
Tague was a graduate student at the time and didn’t have any health insurance. At the clinic, he received Xrays and was sent home. Then the bill came. The final tally for the services was more than $400, Tague remembered, well beyond what he could afford.
“I just didn’t pay it,” he said. As the outstanding payment notices kept coming, he paid what he could in increments. Eventually, the notices stopped.
It is precisely this type of predicament, found widely among members of the city’s artistic community, that inspired gallery owner and artist Jonathan Ferrara and family physician Dr. Vincent Morelli to establish ARTDOCS, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, in 1999.
The program, whose acronym stands for Artists Receiving Treatment Doctors Offering Crucial Services, functions much like the New Orleans Musicians Clinic does, designed to provide health care to other contributors to the city’s creative class – the visual and performance artists and writers who often are uninsured and can’t afford health care.
ARTDOCS patients must be New Orleans artists who are uninsured and earn less than $21,600, or twice the federal poverty standard.
For qualifying clients, the program covers the costs of office visits with a family physician and any associated lab fees. Those in need of specialist care are funneled through the University Hospital system or referred to one of the health care providers affiliated with the program on a volunteer basis.
Organizers say the program is one of the first of its kind in the country. Morelli, meantime, has established a version of ARTDOCS in Nashville, Tenn., where he moved after Katrina.
“Everybody talks about the cultural economy, especially after Katrina,” Ferrara said. “… The methodology behind ARTDOCS is if you want to have a cultural economy, you have to have a healthy culture. To have healthy culture, you have to have healthy artists.”
“As a family physician, you learn to work in the community that you live in, whether that’s physically or entertainment-wise or whatever it is,” Raman said.
“… I’ve always grown up around people who are artistic. … This is just a natural extension of me giving back to the community that I live in.”
ARTDOCS covers most of its costs through a regular art auction. The first auction since Katrina will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Heffler Warehouse at 851 Magazine St.
Ferrara said the event will feature many of the artists whose works are represented, music by DJ Soul Sister, fire spinners and aerialists and food and drink.
Admission to the auction is $15 at the door per person or $25 for couples. Buyers can also offer bids online at www.artdocs.com\auction.
Organizers hope to raise around $50,000 through the event.
“That’ll sustain us for the next year and a half, hopefully,” Ferrara said. “And if we raise more than that, it will help us to possibly expand some services.”
Not long after his expensive medical experience, Tague, now 35, was turned on to ARTDOCS and has been an avid supporter of the program ever since.
“I had pulled my shoulder out, ripped a ligament in it,” he said. “I went over there and I was sitting in the waiting room. … A second later they called me back and I was like, ‘Is this for real?’ I thought I’d be waiting for hours.”
Tague received X-rays and two more followup visits – and, even more extraordinary than the short wait time – no bills for the services.
Soon after, Tague got a job that offered health benefits, but he continues to donate works of art to every ARTDOCS auction and tell other artists about the program.
His donation this year comes from a recent series designed to highlight what he considers to be some of the pitfalls of American capitalism. It targets what he sees as the shortcomings in the nation’s health care system.