Hollywood Detatchment And Support Of Obamacare

At a time when the recovery that never was dwindles away to 101 million or so Americans on food-stamps, welfare, Section 8 and other “entitlements,” we are now faced with a new full frontal assault by the Obama-backing Hollywood “elite.” This time, the brilliant actors have been co-opted by the Obama Administration in a last ditch effort to gain public support for the total destruction of our healthcare system, via the monstrosity known as “Obamacare.”

Now, I am all for civil political discourse and as you know, I love the hell out of a good debate. Furthermore, I am all for everyone exercising their rights under The United States Constitution, specifically the right to free speech. After all, I have earned a damn good living doing so for more than thirty years. But sometimes, I have to call “bull****” on a ruse-this is one of those times!

While it has been about eight years since I had insurance through The Screen Actors Guild (having opted out of the union due to their blind support of Obama and his Marxist agenda), I do remember well , the ridiculously cheap and comprehensive “fringe benefits” one earned when working as an actor. I made a killing acting. I made the most in “TV Spots” (Commercials). Commercials are particularly lucrative under the SAG/AFTRA collective bargaining agreement, as we actors are paid each and every time they run. The amount varies, based on how long it runs (there are specified amounts for each time they show, based on a 13 week period. There are also wonderful things called “Wild Spots,” whereby the spots are placed in very highly trafficked time-slots, where we may earn as much as $400/each showing. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars acting in commercials. And while never reaching marquis name status, I also made a lot of dough in movies and television too-on my last film, my weekly “quote” was $30K/week. Even making dough like that, I was never happier than when I realized what my insurance costs and benefits were. In fact, it was so cheap, I nearly wet my pants.
At the time I was eligible last, it cost my family no more than $325 per quarter year for health, dental, vision, accidental death and injury insurance. Furthermore, as long as I made somewhere around $25K each quarter ( which I made monthly on commercials while they ran), I would continue to be eligible. Do the math-that’s $1,300/year, which is what most families pay monthly. That is dirt cheap, especially during a time when everyone else’s insurance cost was climbing on average nationwide at 18% per year. Of course, not every actor is eligible-only the working actors qualify, but consider the fact that the “celebrities” who are now helping jam Obamacare down our throats are filthy rich, and can afford the same $25K a year you and I now pay for insurance, and you should be starting to get a bit angry.

Understand, I am not bemoaning their benefits. In fact, most actors had to go through many years, if not decades, before becoming eligible, of below poverty level living to get to the point of earning SAG sponsored benefits. I remember well working security at the back gate of 6 Flags Great America, when I booked “Crime Story.” I lost the security job. I worked on a TV Show and got my SAG card, but in the end, lost a lot of income, and waited a month before my first check came from my agent for the acting gig. I had to scramble to find work-and ended up bussing tables at a snooty country club. It was horrible. So I get the fact that those who are eligible for the SAG benefits have worked to get there-many have literally starved, and some have even lived on the streets or in their cars. We’ve all heard those stories. So then why is it so hard for them to remember how difficult it is to earn a living doing real work? At the end of the day, acting isn’t a job-especially at that level! You are waited on hand and foot on set. You have a private trailer to hang out in, in between “deals” (camera set ups), and you have a smorgasbord to dine on all day long, consisting of whatever you can imagine. You ask, they get it. It is not reality. It is not work. Oh yeah, sometimes the hours are long. But the last film I acted, I worked roughly 45 minutes in a 16 hour day (it was indie) and when I wasn’t shooting, I was stuffing my face, talking to locals, or listening to my ipod.

Where was I? Oh yeah, at present, the same rules apply in SAG/AFTRA for insurance. You must qualify for the benefit, by making enough money, to ostensibly put a large chunk of your earnings into the coffer, so that all actors at your level get the same coverage. It’s like this in all unions. The union gets a certain percentage of your check (13 or so for SAG/AFTRA). So, while the 2% or so (who work regularly) of all 600,000 actors in Hollywood get full benefits, the “journeymen” actors in Hollywood, NY, Chicago, and elsewhere get a kick in the stomach. Because it is those fellow actors they are hurting most. You see, those actors still pay 13% of each paycheck to the union, but get no pension, no fringe benefits. It is those actors who, like the rest of the “middle class” go to a restaurant and wait tables, give tours at Universal Studios, change oil at Jiffy Lube, clean houses, etc, who are getting saddled with the high cost of Obamacare, and the lack of good service. In the end, they will have a government insurance card, which most doctors in the Los Angeles basin won’t take, just as they refuse Medicaid, due to the State of California not making good on Medicaid claims for as long as 24 months, and even then only paying about 25% of the bill. The marquis name actors are literally destroying the actors struggling to get to that same place in their careers. It’s the little guy, be he an actor, or ditch digger, who will be broken by the requirement to pay in a lump sum, the full amount of an insurance policy as of January 1, 2014, or pay a giant penalty. Either way, the IRS will reach into their bank accounts and take it. After all, that is why Obamacare links your banking to your healthcare-so they can rob you blind, in the name of “affordable healthcare.” You will pay the “tax,” penalty, tax, penalty-whatever.

Picture yourself a young actor. You saved a few grand and moved to LA to become a working actor. The cost of living there is nearly twice that of any other US city, save New York, Boston, and Chicago. You are barely making ends meet-working three jobs-and trying to keep your beater car on the road to make it to auditions (LA is spread over a very large area and has the worst mass-transit of all big cities in the US). You can’t take a 3 hour cab ride down the 5 to get to an audition-or over the hills to the valley from your cheap hovel in Hollywood. You must own a car. Now, suddenly, your colleagues are helping tout “insurance” that will break you. It will cost you an arm and a leg. And if you don’t buy it, the IRS will garnish your pittance of a paycheck from the restaurant where you wait tables-incidentally serving those high-dollar marquis name actors, who are crappy tippers!

Of course, those actors are no different than everyone else in America. Those $25M per film superstars are screwing us all. By standing by a “healthcare” program they haven’t researched, and frankly know nothing about, they bury us all. While they get a sweetheart “Cadillac Healthcare Plan,” you get stuck with $1500/month premiums if you are lucky, or with government issued “Obamacare” if you are really unlucky. You get to call 25 or more doctors offices each time you are sick and ask if they take government insurance. Oh, you’ll find a doctor who does. But it won’t be the UCLA trained doctors that those Marquis name actors see. It will be a University of Baghdad trained doctor, who speaks with such a thick accent you don’t understand him/her. You will have a doctor who has a medical degree from University of Mumbai-where incidentally you don’t need an undergraduate degree to go to medical school!

In the end, like all liberal elites, the Hollywood types have once again decided to take the side of the guy who appears to be socially in keeping with their beliefs. They have forgotten once and for all, who pays their enormous salaries. They don’t quite realize that when the IRS is garnishing the wages of what is left of the middle class, all of their movies will be box-office failures like so many films have this summer, which is no coincidence. The 2013 summer box office bust is direct consequence of so many middle class Americans’ pay cuts, job losses, and loss of unemployment. In other words, the box-office carnage is caused by Obamacare and other Obama policies that are crushing the movie going public-and the cable buying public. In the near future no one will be able to dispose of income on luxuries like Hollywood generated product, due to a lack of any disposable income. When the American public is forced to buy overpriced health insurance, and fined immensely if they do not, they will have nothing to spend on movies, video games, or cable television. And my friends, there’s where the irony falls at the feet of Hollywood. Those marquis actors will be out of work, and their unions broke. Their pensions will evaporate as yours and mine are, and their Cadillac Plan health insurance will no longer be free. Obamacare for everyone, even the ruling class-what goes around comes around, eventually.