State Champ Radio health insurance
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For touring professionals in the live music industry, healthcare has long been an elusive benefit. While local stagehands working in venues across the country have enjoyed employer-provided health insurance for decades through International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) contracts, their counterparts on the road — the audio engineers, lighting technicians, production coordinators, and other crew members who travel with touring shows — have been left to navigate the healthcare system on their own.
Now, IATSE is working to change that through an ambitious grassroots campaign to extend its National Benefit Fund to touring professionals, offering them access to the same healthcare and retirement benefits enjoyed by their venue-based colleagues.
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The disparity — what some stagehands call the tale of two crews — becomes starkly apparent when touring and local union members work side by side in the same venue.
“I’ll be in an arena for 20 plus hours working side by side with someone from the local IATSE, and we’re in the same situation, the same long hours, possibly a dangerous environment, yet they are covered,” says Ally Vatter, a production coordinator who has been touring for 21 years, currently with Nine Inch Nails. “They are insured. I pay out of pocket, but if I can’t afford that, then I won’t be insured.”
The consequences of this gap can be severe. In 2009, before the Affordable Care Act eliminated pre-existing condition exclusions, Vatter’s appendix burst while on tour. As an uninsurable 27-year-old, she was left with a $50,000 hospital bill and discharged from the hospital just a day and a half after surgery because she had no insurance. The artist she was working for organized an early crowdfunding effort that eventually paid off the debt, but the experience highlighted a systemic problem.
“We work so hard, and we work for millionaires, and we’re over here begging each other for help,” Vatter says, noting that crowdfunding campaigns for touring crew members facing medical crises remain common today.
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Nathan Honor, a sound engineer and member of IATSE Local 4 in Brooklyn and Local 100 on the East Coast, recalls his own pre-union touring days: “I broke my foot at one point and had to do an entire tour with a limp, with a bad foot, and never really dealt with it, and it had lasting repercussions.”
The irony, as Joseph Juntunen points out, is that a solution already exists. Juntunen, a special representative for IATSE who spent years touring with acts like Black 47 and Graham Parker before helping organize unions at Webster Hall and Brooklyn Steel, explains that the National Benefit Fund has been providing healthcare and retirement benefits to IATSE members across various entertainment sectors for decades.
“When an employer makes a contribution to that fund, that money belongs to the recipient. It belongs to the person that earns that money through their labor, and it goes with them wherever they go,” Juntunen says.
The fund currently serves the vast majority of IATSE’s more than 180,000 members who work in TV, film, Broadway, trade shows and venues. The touring initiative, which would extend access to an estimated 33,000 professionals working in the touring industry globally, is designed around the realities of touring work, which involves professionals potentially working for multiple employers throughout the year.
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Here’s how it would function: When an artist or management company agrees to participate, they make contributions to the National Benefit Fund on behalf of their touring crew members. These contributions then go into individual “cap accounts” that belong to the workers and accumulate across different tours and employers.
“If you do one tour for two months at the beginning of the year, that money goes into your cap account. If you do another tour three months later on the same plan, that money would go into that cap account,” Honor explains. “Every quarter, there is a qualifying period where you choose your level of coverage, and then money is deducted from that cap account to buy your health insurance.”
Critically, the money stays in the worker’s account even during gaps between tours. “Even if no employer makes a contribution for two years, that money stays in your cap account, and you can use it to buy health insurance,” Honor says.
The system offers flexible tiered coverage options, ranging from catastrophic coverage for younger, healthier workers to premium “Cadillac” plans for those with families or greater healthcare needs. Workers can also pay out of pocket to upgrade their coverage if their cap account contributions aren’t sufficient for their desired plan level.
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Healthcare is provided through Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the plan’s large membership base allows for competitive rates that individual touring professionals could never achieve on their own.
Unlike traditional union initiatives, the health plan is entirely voluntary — no employer or worker is mandated to participate. Instead, IATSE is building support through a grassroots campaign, encouraging touring professionals to have conversations with their employers about joining the program.
“The touring industry is very big and broad, but it’s also small in the way that there’s a big word-of-mouth system that happens,” Vatter says. “Word travels quickly.”
The campaign is targeting artists, managers and tour managers — the key decision makers who control touring budgets. A town hall for interested parties is planned, and committee members have been working to spread awareness across the industry.
“We’re not looking to start fights with the employers. We’re not looking to have adversarial relationships,” Juntunen emphasizes. “We’re looking to work together to build a more sustainable, healthy touring industry.”
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The ultimate vision is for healthcare contributions to become a standard line item in touring budgets, much like they already are for venue work. If major promoters like Live Nation or AEG were to adopt the program across their tours, it could rapidly become an industry standard.
“We think this is really an opportunity for artists and management to put their money where their mouth is and help the people who are making the show,” Honor says.
According to Juntunen, the response so far has been encouraging. “The conversation is expanding rapidly, and we are in active discussions with several teams right now for next year’s touring cycle,” he says.
For touring professionals who have spent their careers without the basic security that their venue-based counterparts take for granted, the initiative represents more than just healthcare — it’s recognition of their essential role in the industry.
“This is the first time that someone extended an olive branch to the touring industry and said, ‘Hey, we see you. We understand we’re working right there with you, and we really want to make sure that you guys are safe and covered and taking care of yourselves as well,’” Vatter says. “Because in the end, we have the same goal, right? It’s to get that show up and make it work.”
As Honor notes, touring is “a very high impact business” where veteran crew members often reach their 40s, 50s, and 60s with health problems they can’t afford to treat and no retirement savings. “Not a day goes by at work that you don’t meet somebody who’s been touring for 20, 30, 40 years, and they don’t have anything saved,” he says.
After Chappell Roan was criticized by a former music industry executive for her speech at the 2025 Grammys, the singer encouraged the music industry’s power players to join her in raising money for artists’ healthcare coverage. Now, it appears that the industry listened.
On Monday (Feb. 10), Roan officially partnered with the non-profit Backline to launch the We Got You campaign, a fundraising initiative aimed at “supporting accessibility of health care for artists,” according to its donation page. In an Instagram Stories post revealing the partnership, Roan added that she had donated $25,000 to the campaign — with fellow artists Charli XCX and Noah Kahan matching her donation — and urged industry executives to do the same.
“Fans, y’all don’t have to donate a damn penny,” she said in the post. “This is one of many opportunities for the industry powers to show up for artists. There is much more work to be done.”
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According to We Got You’s donations page, multiple major music companies and executives matched Roan’s donations. Public $25,000 contributions from Live Nation, AEG Global Touring, Wasserman Foundation and Hinterland Music Festival are listed among the campaign’s supporters, as well as matching donations from Sumerian Records founder/CEO Ash Avildsen and talent manager Guy Oseary.
“Thanks Chappell Roan for inspiring change,” read a noted shared alongside AEG’s donation. Avildsen added, “Sumerian Records always strives to be on the right side of history. Then. Now. Forever.”
In a statement shared to their Instagram, Hinterlands Music Festival commended Roan, Kahan and Charli XCX for publicly supporting “adequate support” for artists. “Without great artists, there are no music festivals,” the organization wrote. “As an independent music festival, we are dedicated to continuing to support and advocate for the well-being of all musicians, no matter their industry success. WE GOT YOU!!”
“This surge in advocacy marks a turning point in our journey as an organization,” said Backline executive director Hilary Gleason in a statement sent to Billboard on Wednesday (Feb. 12). “We are thrilled to see artists, industry leaders, and corporations take action to invest in the health and wellness of the music industry professionals who make it all happen. The awareness alone will have a significant impact for the music community in 2025 and beyond.”
In her own statement shared shortly after the campaign was launched, Backline community manager Terra Lopez praised Roan for helping the organization raise vital funding for artists’ health. “The We Got You campaign is a powerful step in prioritizing mental health and well-being of those who make the music we all love,” she wrote. “Thank you to Chappell Roan, Charli xcx, and Noah Kahan for your advocacy and action to create a more supportive industry — together, we are showing artists they are seen, heard, and cared for.”
Roan’s $25,000 donation was first revealed in a response the artist wrote to former A&R executive Jeff Rabhan, who criticized the singer’s call for label-provided healthcare at the 2025 Grammys. “@jeffrabhan wanna match me $25K to donate to struggling dropped artists?” she wrote on her Instagram Stories last week. “I love how in the article you said ‘put your money where your mouth is.’ Genius !!! Let’s link and build together and see if you can do the same.” At press time, none of the public donations to the campaign bear Rabhan’s name.
After Chappell Roan‘s best new artist acceptance speech Sunday (Feb. 2) at the Grammy Awards, in which she demanded working musicians receive healthcare from their labels and the rest of the record industry “profiting millions of dollars off of artists,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland approached the singer at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
“I said, ‘Hi. You could help us get the word out, because we do provide health benefits — but not everybody knows that,’” says SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator, who wore a navy-blue tuxedo, blue suede shoes, a black shirt and a pink bowtie to the event. “I gave her my contact information.”
Crabtree-Ireland, who attends the Grammys yearly as a leader of the union representing CBS broadcast employees, adds that all three major labels, plus Disney-owned music companies, pay into the SAG-AFTRA fund, making all signed artists eligible for its health insurance. Roan, reading from a notebook onstage, had said in her speech that after her previous label, Atlantic Records, dropped her during the pandemic, she struggled to find a job and affordable healthcare: “If my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to,” she said. “Labels, we got you, but do you got us?”
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After being dropped, Roan would have qualified for COBRA coverage, which is much more expensive, but might have helped during the leaner years before she rose to superstardom. (The SAG-AFTRA plan’s monthly premiums are $125; COBRA rates are $1,201.) Also, because Roan was younger than 26, she could have qualified to be part of her parents’ health insurance, or signed up for a plan under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
But music-business healthcare advocates, including Crabtree-Ireland, are not dismayed that Roan neglected to mention these details. “I was jumping on my couch when Chappell was giving her acceptance speech. I was like, ‘Gosh, thank you for bringing this up.’ The conversation was started,” says Tatum Allsep, founder/CEO of the Music Health Alliance, a 12-year-old Nashville group that provides healthcare information for artists. “What’s really important to know for all the young artists who are listening is you don’t have to go without if you are making a living within our industry.”
Still, the music business is not set up to cater to artists as employees, and Allsep is skeptical of the idea that major labels must provide healthcare directly to every signed artist — beyond the SAG-AFTRA eligibility. Almost all signed musicians are “gig economy” workers without full-time employment and receive income through touring, sponsorship, streaming and other revenue sources. They tend to be disinclined to do what a typical employer would ask of an employee: report to a cubicle to work for a corporate supervisor or give up the rights to their songs and other work to an employer. “It would not be in an artist’s best interests to be an employee at a label,” Allsep says. “They would get a monthly check vs. the opportunity to earn infinitely more.”
Artists could remain independent and negotiate more healthcare as part of their contract, but, according to Allsep, these expenses are “typically recoupable” — which means artists pay these costs from recording advances and must reimburse them out of future profits.
Label contracts, adds Howard King, an attorney who has represented Metallica, Dr. Dre, Eminem and others, “could include provisions for payment of health-insurance premiums or anything else, including payments for car payments or singing lessons.” All contracts are negotiable, so artists who have leverage (like a veteran touring star or someone with multiple viral videos) can request more benefits out of labels than other artists — perhaps like Roan used to be at Atlantic — who are less established as money-making stars.
“Is that fair?” King asks. “I don’t think so, but that’s the practice.”
Healthcare resources for artists are available from several sources, in addition to the ACA, from the Recording Academy-run MusiCares to the Music Health Alliance to the American Federation of Musicians union representing orchestra musicians, studio workers and others, and the American Association of Independent Musicians, which has its own healthcare plan.
Major labels could do more in terms of boosting healthcare resources for artists, according to Kevin Erickson, director of the Washington, D.C., music-industry lobbyist group Future of Music Coalition, but not in the way Roan demanded. He argues labels must aggressively support the ACA, also known as Obamacare, against long-running defunding threats from the Trump Administration and Republicans, as well as advocating over the long term for a single-payer healthcare system, like those in Canada and parts of Europe. “[Labels] already have resources and the ability to fight for additional relief and support [for] the artist community,” he says, referring to the Recording Industry Association of America’s lobbying efforts on other issues. “We need more of that energy.”
Renata Marinaro, managing director of health services for the Entertainment Community Fund, suggests Roan, who is signed to Island Records, owned by major label Universal Music Group, was likely upset not with record-industry inaction but inadequate U.S. healthcare funding in general. “The frustration stems from the fact that there’s no universal coverage,” she says. “I don’t think you can lay that at the feet of any particular employer.”
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