NEW YORK CITY: The theatre can be a risky business, not only because it’s tough to make a living in the performing arts, but because theatre workers are often on their own in finding and maintaining health insurance coverage. United Hospital Fund, with grant support from Venturous Theater Fund, has today released a guide, Riskier Business: A Guide for Dramatists and Performing Arts Workers on Finding Affordable Health Coverage and Care, a free, comprehensive online guidebook designed to help theatre workers and performing arts professionals navigate the often-bewildering world of health insurance, find affordable coverage and care, and become their own best advocates.
The guide highlights recent legislative and regulatory changes that will affect consumers’ coverage for 2026. While the guide largely focuses on coverage options and resources in New York, it also includes information for those living in other states. This new guide is an updated version of a similar resource, Risky Business: A Guide for Dramatists on Finding Affordable Health Coverage and Care, produced by United Hospital Fund in 2024, which focused more specifically on the unique situation of dramatists seeking coverage. The guidebook can be downloaded free of charge on UHF’s website.
“Finding affordable health coverage can be tough for performing arts professionals, and recent legislative changes and cutbacks have made things even more complicated,” Peter Newell, director of United Hospital Fund’s Health Insurance Project and author of the guidebook, said in a statement. “As New York leaders work to maintain affordable coverage despite recent federal actions—and inaction—we hope this new guide provides vital information on the range of options and resources that are available for people in the performing arts field.”
The guide aims to help performing arts professionals without employer or union health plans to identify and select health insurance plans and provide information on how to access essential resources they may not know are available, including free, one-on-one counseling from the Entertainment Community Fund (which provided assistance in developing this guide) and other experienced “navigators,” emergency grants from the Dramatists Guild Foundation, and more. The guide offers easy-to-understand information on Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) plans; public programs like Medicaid, the Essential Plan, and Medicare; and state and federal COBRA rules (which let you keep your employer’s health plan for a limited time after you leave your job). It also offers tips on how to avoid scams and “junk insurance,” gain access to discounted medical care and prescriptions when you are uninsured, get the most out of your plan when you have coverage, and find consumer assistance.
“Every culture worker deserves affordable health insurance and access to quality healthcare,” said Ben Pesner, program director of Venturous Theater Fund, in a statement. “Given recent federal changes affecting the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and other programs, it is more important than ever to provide up-to-date, clear, unbiased information for dramatists and others who make their living in the performing arts.”
United Hospital Fund works to build an effective and equitable health care system for every New Yorker as an independent, nonprofit organization. Venturous Theater Fund (VTF) supports this project through its donor-advised fund, the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. VTF makes grants to fund the production of plays that are “venturous”—ambitious in scale, epic in scope, challenging in form, controversial in subject matter, experimental in concept, and/or unabashed in their theatricality. VTF also funds artist-driven initiatives that embrace agency for playwrights at all stages of their careers.
